


His Body in Chains

by ParadiseAvenger



Category: Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle
Genre: F/M, Past Abuse, Slavery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 01:14:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 55,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseAvenger/pseuds/ParadiseAvenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nameless, beaten, broken, destroyed… he wanted nothing more than to one day have someone touch his abused body gently, but he knew that would never happen. As a slave, his fate was always in someone else's hands. AU. Adult themes. SyaoranXSakura.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. His Worthless Body

Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

This started out as a post for Lemon Reservoir, but I started it and now I just can’t get it out of my head. 

Anyone who was reading The Shattered Mirror and really into it, sorry, but it’ll be on hiatus until I finish this one up. Again, I’m so sorry, but I will get back to it. I hate leaving things unfinished.

X X X

He had been a slave all his life, but not a simple slave used for physical labor or menial cooking or tending a family in a posh little plantation manor. There were so many times in the years he could remember that he wanted to die for what he was. He was one of the worst, the most tormented, the most anguished, the most used. 

He was a sex slave. 

…and had been since the approximate day he turned fourteen…

Before that, though, like every other male child slave not sodomized by a vicious master, he worked his body to the bone in the fields. Female children were never so lucky. He often heard them screaming in the slave shacks at night when masters came to ravage their not-yet-pubescent bodies. 

He had been a sex slave for six years, not that his body was pure and untouched when he turned fourteen and was sold to a new master. After all, he was a beautiful young man, or so he had been told. He had been touched and taken many times.

His body was skeleton-thin without an extra ounce of flesh on his frame, but toned from years of hard work. His hair was unkempt and raggedly cut, but thick coffee-colored and wispy like fine chocolate curls on a rich cream cake. His eyes were even more shocking. They were beautiful honeyed-amber and deep with profound suffering and sadness. 

While his body and features were attractive, the numerous scars and abuses his body had suffered had taken some of the beauty from his figure. His stomach was concave, eyes sunken deep back in his face and shadowed heavily with exhaustion and bruises, his hands were stick-thin with nails chewed to the quick, and his ribcage was crooked and craggy with numerous breaks. He had been beaten countless times and his porcelain pale skin still bore the pearl-white scars. He looked sick and dead, like a corpse made up to be gorgeous in its velvet coffin.

The worst part of being a sex slave wasn’t the sex, which could hurt and make him sick to his empty stomach; it was the horrible used feeling that welled up in his heart. His body was dying all around him from the tortures he endured. 

Then, on one of the days he couldn’t thoroughly recall in absolute clarity because of his growling empty body, something happened that he wasn’t expecting. His master took his blood to be tested for disease and fed him a heavy meal of bread and milk. Then, he was told that he was being sold.

Through all that joy, he could only dwell on the way his master took him the final night and morning he was in her possession:

Gripping the sheets tightly in his white-knuckled fingers, he screwed his amber eyes shut as she dug her fingers into his chest and rode him. She was moaning and yowling in pleasure, like a rutting bitch in heat. Her wetness soaked the cavity of emptiness in his stomach and her fingernails carved half-moons in his skin. When she kissed him, he let his lips be bruised and crushed beneath her onslaught. Then, she bit him and suckled at the tear in his thin lips.

When she was finished, she lewdly spread herself against him on the bed and made him touch the depths of her wet slit. He stroked her the way he was supposed to and brought her to another shattering climax. Then, she fell asleep.

She slept with her leg draped over his narrow sharp waist and her cold fingers fisted in his freshly washed hair. When the sun dawned on another sleepless night turning to day, she groaned in her sleep when the light touched her closed eyes. Then, her eyes opened and he pretended to be asleep, hoping she wouldn’t take him again. 

“Hey, wake up,” she crooned against the shell of his ear. A shiver ran down his spine and he tried to keep his faux sleeping face blank. He heard her make a displeased sound in her throat and then he wished he had woken up when she first bid him to. 

“I said, wake up!” she snarled and pinched his nipple hard between her fingers and twisted it viciously. 

Whimpering in pain, his eyes slid open.

“Were you faking?” she hissed.

“Yes, mistress,” he confessed weakly.

Her mouth twisted meanly and her brows rose. “Oh, do you know what I do to lying slaves like you?”

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly. “You beat them,” he whispered.

Her pointed tongue traced the long length of his collarbone and then she bit him, hard, in the hollow of his throat. He heard the flesh rending like the first bit of a crisp peach and the pain rocketed through his entire body like a white-hot flame. 

“You’re lucky you’re being sold today or I’d whip this beautiful translucent skin right off your chest,” she snarled. “I’d skin you down until I was able to see your beating heart,” she splayed her fingers on his chest and then dug her nails into him, “and I’d squeeze it in my hand until you stopped breathing.”

He shuddered.

“But, you’ll be gone soon and I’ll be a married woman just next week. I can’t say I’d rather have your cock than kill you, but your body is within my grasp.” Her cold hand ventured between his legs and wrapped around the length of him. She squeezed firmly and rubbed him into fullness.

Then, she lifted one leg over his face, straddled his head, and spread her nether lips with two fingers.

“Lick me,” she demanded.

And he did. 

He had to.

After her moisture had covered his mouth and face, she scooted down the naked curve of his body and mounted him. Rocking her hips, moaning, and cursing, she fucked him the hardest she ever had. She gripped his shoulders, dug her nails into his flesh, and then hit him. Once, twice, three times, she slapped his face. 

His teeth sank through the corner of his mouth and she lewdly licked the blood away.

He squashed down a whimper of fear as she fisted her hands in his hair.

She kissed him, hard, pushing her tongue into his mouth. She clawed his chest and fondled him and struck him a few more times and finally her muscles clenched hard around him. After she climaxed, she spread herself on her bed and waved her hand at him. 

“Alright, you can go now. I have no further use for you, fuck-toy,” she said.

And then, she sent him off to auction like the piece of used worthless property that he really was.

...

Dressed in a fresh pair of ragged pants and a loose threadbare shirt that once may have been white, he watched as his hands were shackled in front of him. Then, they led him out of the plush plantation manor. The lady master was getting married and was not longer allotted a sex slave, especially one as beautiful as him. He was packed away in the truck and then the vehicle trundled away from the place where he had spent years on the cold floor and in her bed.

At auction, lined up like a fish to be filleted, he waited to be sold and owned again. Finally, his turn came.

Cold fingers gripped his face and turned his eyes from the floor to the assembly of buyers. Unable to meet anyone’s eyes, they rolled back in his head in resistance.

“I have a beautiful amber-eyed young man here! Sex slave, appears completely broken! Do I hear 900 dollars?”

“950!”

“1,000!”

“1,100!”

The bidding continued and he tried not to think about what new horrors his body would be delivered to, but his twisted shattered mind just kept replaying images and terrors to him. He could be bought by a man and sodomized, taken from behind, or sucked by a sour mouth. A sadist could beat him to a bloody pulp every night or stuff his body with toys and gag him. Another woman could be almost more inventive than men.

“3,000!” The sweetness in the voice surprised him. It was gentle and feminine and kind.

Her bid was followed by a collective gasp from the assembled crowd. No one would pay so much for a used sex slave. For a virgin female, maybe, but never a violated and beaten male slave. 

His chest clenched and he was suddenly afraid of the hope blossoming inside his heart.

“Do I hear 3,050? 3,050? No?”

The auctioneer waited for a moment and then released his face with a snarl. 

“Sold, Number 17 for the price of 3,000 dollars!” 

He got a harsh shove and stumbled from the platform into the waiting arms of the auction guard, also a slave. The beefy man handled him back into the cells to await his new master to come pay for him. Shivering with cold and fear, he huddled in the dark corner. He could hear the auction through the thick stone walls and abruptly felt nauseous. His empty stomach roiled with acid and he almost retched, but tamped down the urge as there was nothing in his stomach anyway.

Surprisingly, after only a few minutes, the beefy slave came to get him. It seemed his new master had no intention of staying throughout the entire auction.

His raw wrists were shackled again and he was led from the darkness of the cell. In a lighted room with polished linoleum floors and marble countertops, a slender young woman waited. He wouldn’t dare look at her face, but her legs were long and shapely and she had a thin narrow waist with lightly flared hips. She was wearing a beautiful white dress with a long flowing skirt and some gold embroidery. Her feet were small and dainty and her toenails were painted pale lavender. 

As beautiful as she was, he realized something was wrong with her when she turned. Her right leg dragged slightly on the floor behind her when she walked. It was encased in a tight metal brace that went far up her leg to disappear beneath the hem of her white skirt and traveled down below her foot and shoe.

She was crippled, it seemed. Maybe more than just her leg, but he didn’t dare raise his eyes to look.

“Hello,” she said in that beautiful sweet voice of hers. 

He dropped to his knees and spread himself out on the white linoleum in a low graceless bow. His fingertips were scant inches from her feet and he suddenly realized how easy it would be for her to just crush his bones beneath the heel of her shoe. 

“Oh,” was all she said and she did not so much as move to grind his fingers beneath her foot. “Could you stand up, please?” She continued. “We need to be going soon. I can only stand on this leg for a short while before it weakens too much to stand on.” 

He rose to his feet and held out his wrists for her to attach a leash. 

She attached a soft loop of what looked like silk to his black and bloody chains. Wincing as the cold metal rubbed roughly against his chaffed wrists, he followed her obediently out of the white room. 

The sunlight kissed his pale flesh and the faint flower-scented breeze whispered on his cheeks. Unthinking, for a moment, he paused and turned his battered face into the sun. Breathing deeply of the fresh air he hadn’t tasted in years. The only smells he had known were blood and sex and his own unwashed skin.

He heard the girl make a quiet sound and instantly snapped his eyes back to the ground.

“It’s alright,” she whispered. “You can take all the time you wish…”

He shook his head and took the few steps required to reach her side.

“Really, it’s alright,” she told him gently.

He wrapped his fingers into fists and tried to squash the tremor that wracked his frame.

For a moment, they stood there and he felt the young woman’s eyes on him. Then, she made a soft noise and started walking again. Her leg dragged along behind her, metal brace screaming on the macadam. He wanted to offer to help her, but he couldn’t speak to her without invitation.

They reached a vehicle, but he didn’t raise his eyes to see what color or model. Unbidden, he took a few extra steps and opened the door for her. 

“Thank you,” she said kindly and he watched her legs as she eased into the driver’s seat of the vehicle. She slipped her body in first, then her good leg, and finally lifted her crippled one in with both her hands wrapped around her knee. “Go ahead around and hop in the passenger seat.”

As he slid into the plush seat, he took a moment to wonder why she had thanked him. 

Masters never thanked slaves. 

The engine turned over on the first try and then the car rolled out of the lot. “Here we go,” the young woman said cheerfully. She paused to adjust the heater and then shift her crippled leg into a better position to allow her good leg to reach the pedals.

He glanced up and saw the auction house disappearing in the mirror. This part of his life was over and he dared hope it was for the best.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

Review!


	2. The Scent of a House

Rawr! Chapter two!

I caught a toad this weekend and called my boyfriend first thing to see if he was still human. I have named him Yuu just to confuse everyone around me.

X X X

Finally, the long drive ground to a halt in front of the most beautiful place he had ever seen. The moment he saw it, his awe overwhelmed his fear of even being beaten. He straightened in the seat and leaned in at the window.

The house was beautiful. It was mildly colonial and painted crisp clean white. Its shutters were deep blue, cobalt colored, like deep twilight. It had many big windows and a few done in beautiful brightly colored stained glass. The porch was wraparound and decorated with a beautiful ornate railing. Several wicker sofas and chairs lined the porch. 

All around the house was a burgeoning garden with every sort of flower he had never seen. A big beautiful cherry tree was in full bloom, decorated with pink, red, and white blossoms. Petals and the wonderful scent swirled on the breeze.

It was like something from his dreams.

“We’re home,” she said beside him and his eyes instantly crashed to the floor of the car again. His shoulders trembled. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “I love my house, too. I just bought it, after I left home, after it happened.” 

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and she was resting one slender pale hand on her crippled leg. Like his fingers, her nails were bitten to the quick.

Suddenly, he wondered if she was a slave as well.

He reached for the handle, preparing to get out and open her door for her.

“Wait,” she said suddenly and his back tensed ramrod straight. “Let me take those things off you.”

His fingers worried at the hem of his shirt. Things? His clothes? 

“Here,” she said and reached for him. Much to his surprise, she lifted his hands and quietly unlocked the chains around his wrists. Then, she tossed them in the backseat with a sound that must have been disgust. “It’s sick,” she whispered, “what they do to you. Disgusting.”

He shivered. 

“I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered and clasped his hands gently in her own. “I’m sure you don’t believe me, but I…”

Her hands were so warm and soft, touching him softly, compassionately. 

She never finished what she was saying. She was staring at his hands, at the many countless wounds and scars in his flesh. “Oh my God,” she whispered and he tried to pull his hands away. She only tightened her grip on him. “How could they do something like this to you? How could anyone hurt anyone so badly?”

He had wondered the very same thing many times when his body was torn and beaten and raped. His wrists were encircled with scars, pink and thick. They were old burn scars from searing hot metal shackles. Other smaller fainter cuts crossed over and around the burns. These were from chains he had struggled against as a child, knives and razors that slowly dug through his flesh, and a few small punctures from places were nails had been driven through him.

Further up his arms were other scars: lacerations, cuts, and smaller burns from the years before he turned fourteen, before he became a sex slave, when he still worked in the fields. These were mainly accidents. She could only see the scars on his arms, not the ones on his back or his chest or his heart. 

He heard her sniffling, but did not dare raise his eyes.

Slowly, her warm soft hands left his wrists where they had been gently touching the ridges of his scars. She cupped his face and tried to raise it, but he twisted from her hands. She held his shoulders and they felt like the skulls of birds.

“Please, won’t you look at me?” she whispered.

A distressed sound emerged from his throat, fighting past his teeth to escape.

“Please, I promise not to hurt you. I just want to see you, please,” she murmured. 

This time, when she slid her fingers under his chin and lifted it, he allowed her to, but he kept his eyes screwed tightly closed. Her soft fingertips touched his eyelids gently, but he resisted her quiet encouragement to open them.

It was forbidden for a slave to look at a master!

Forbidden!

Shivering, he waited for her to finish touching him. She traced the planes of his face with her fingertips, gently, lightly. Her touch ghosted over his eyes, his high sharp cheekbones, his split lips, the shadowed bruises around his eyes, the scars on his brow, and down the curve of his jaw. Then, she tenderly ran her finger down the column of his throat and then across one long deep collarbone. Her hands rested on his body for a long moment.

Sighing so suddenly that she startled him, she then pulled away and opened the door. “Come on, then. Let’s go inside,” she said kindly. 

He scrambled from the car, gingerly touching his sore chaffed wrists. He followed after her as she limped up the stairs, fished out a ring of jingling keys, and unlocked the door. She stepped inside and he heard her shrugging from a jacket of some kind. 

“Come on in,” she murmured as she hung the jacket in the hall closet. 

He closed the door quietly behind himself and inhaled the scent of the house. Something was cooking, meat and vegetables and something vaguely garlic-scented. Beneath that was the smell of clean linen and soft flowery perfume. The dark hardwood floors were polished to a sparkling shine and waxed so there was a faint trace of lemon. There were no rugs on the floor and a few lamps were glowing with low light. The atmosphere in the house was beautiful, relaxed, calm, and, above all, safe.

“Let’s go to the kitchen. I put something in the crock pot this morning and it should be ready by now.”

He wondered if she planned to starve him. Some people liked their slaves slender to a dangerous anorexic state. Bones were beautiful, lovely, and white. His stomach growled hollowly, emptily. He hadn’t eaten in days, since before his last master had sent his blood in to test for diseases.

“When was the last time you’ve eaten?” she asked as she limped to the kitchen and flipped on the light. Warm amber light flooded the kitchen, bouncing off the marble countertops and sparkling copper pots hanging from the ceiling rack. The glass topped table was set with a lace tablecloth and a vase of wild daisies. 

He bit his lip. Should he lie or confess that he was starving?

“When did you eat last?” she repeated patiently and lifted the lid on the crock pot to investigate the contents. 

The scents that washed over him made his mouth water and he tried to remember exactly what day his blood had been sent out. When had he last eaten?

“Do you understand me?” she said, sounding very concerned.

He nodded nervously.

She let out a sigh of what must have been relief. “Good,” she murmured and he heard her stirring the food. She delicately sipped the broth and made a sound in her throat. “Perfect. Now, tell me, when did you last eat?”

“I,” he hesitated, “I’m not sure…” His voice sounded strange to his own ears, weak and shivery, like that of a small fearful child. 

She was quiet for a long moment and then she shuffled to a cabinet and began pulling out dishes. He heard her set them out and then ladled food into them. “Come, sit at the table. Would you pull a chair out for me, please?”

Scrambling to do her bidding, he rushed to the table. Her gait was lurching, jerky, as she limped to the table and set out two bowls. One was significantly fuller than the other and she set that one in front of the chair she seemed to intend him to sit in. Trembling, she lowered herself into the chair he had pulled out for her and then cursed quietly.

His back jerked ramrod straight.

“I forgot spoons. Would you get some, please?”

He hesitated and glanced nervously at the kitchen through the veil of hanging pots. “W-where are they?”

“In the second drawer from the left side of the fridge,” she said and sounded happy.

He got two spoons and returned to the table.

“Sit down and dig in,” she said. “If you want more, just tell me. Please.”

He wouldn’t and he was sure she knew that because she went quiet and ate delicately. He wanted to nibble at his food, to appear as if he wasn’t starving to death, but once the first taste touched his tongue. The ravenous appetite he was trying to hide surged up through his throat. It must have been the best thing he had ever tasted. The meat was soft and juicy with potatoes and carrots and celery mixed in. He found mushrooms and noodles and sweet corn. 

Before he knew it, he had emptied his bowl.

“Would you like more?”

He trembled and shook his head. 

“Please, I won’t hurt you. I want you to be full.”

He shook his head again.

She sighed and whispered, “Maybe with time…”

Then, she stood up, took his bowl, stacked it on hers, and limped to the kitchen sink. He watched from the corner of his eye as her pale white hands loaded the used dishes into the dish washer. Then, she closed it and took a few hobbling steps back to his side.

“Come on. I’ve already got a room set up for you,” she murmured and he followed her down the hall. She pushed open a door and flipped on the light. “This will be your room. Mine is right down the hall so, please, if you need anything don’t hesitate to ask.” 

He wouldn’t and she knew that.

“One more thing, if you hear anything during the night, wake me. That’s an order.” And with that, she limped down the hall and disappeared in her room.

Spent and shivering, he stepped into the room and looked around. It was painted pale blue with soft white curtains and a plush white carpet that his feet sank into. There was a nondescript dresser and two dark wood doors with crystal knobs. Closer inspection led one to open into a bathroom and the other to an empty closet. Finally, he hesitantly went to the bed and brushed his hands over the soft cotton quilt. Some grey sweatpants and a loose one-size-fits-all t-shirt had been left out for him. 

He quickly changed clothes, laying his slave garb neatly on the nightstand next to the bed. He slid between the crisp cool clean sheets. The bed was blessedly comfortable, but he could not sleep. 

Through the door, he heard the young woman crying out in her sleep.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	3. His Only Possession

It looks like it’s going to be a nice day out today. Yay!

You know what, boys are butts.

X X X

The morning dawned with a thick grey blanket of clouds in the chilly sky. It looked like rain and the blossom-scented air now hung heavy with the tang of rain. He had gotten little sleep last night though he had only ever slept in a bed after a master was finished using his body. The girl had been crying and making small sounds of protests in her sleep. When she finally collapsed into exhausted quiet, he had also drifted into the world of nightmares. 

All night, he dreamed of his first master–the father of the woman who was getting married and had sold him—taking him without preparation. No words could accurately describe the tearing pain when taken from behind. The fat girth of a grown man’s cock pushing into his not-yet-pubescent body tore him apart. Then, thrusting and pounding, groaning so loudly in his ear, slimy tongue tracing the shell of his ear and the column of his spine. Finally, there was hot liquid filling his body and then dribbling down his parted thighs.

He had felt sick and used for days after that, though his master gave him little time to think about what had happened. Each night, he fucked him and, sometimes during the day, the master cornered him and forced his cock down his throat. At night, he dreamed of the occurrences again and again, as frequently as he had been taken.

Finally, the night came to an end. 

He got out of bed, neatly smoothed down the sheets, changed back into his worn clothing, and folded the pajamas up on the pillows as he had found them. Then, he went to the bathroom, relieved himself, and timidly splashed some cold water on his face. 

He barely recognized his battered reflection in the mirror. The bruises around his eyes were a touch lighter and the thick bloody split in his lip was beginning to heal at the edges, but the rest of his face was his usual beaten countenance. 

Then, he quietly peeked out the door. 

The aroma of coffee bathed the inside of his nose and he could hear rattling popping cooking noises coming from the kitchen. 

For a moment, he hesitated. 

The girl had not told him to leave his room nor had she told him to stay inside it. She might have company over even so early and his appearance might anger her and her guests. He would hate to start the day being beaten or whipped or end the week by starving.

Finally, he stepped from the room, quietly shut the door, and crept silently down the hall to peek into the kitchen.

The girl was there. 

She was sitting in a wheelchair with her back to him. Her shoulders were narrow and shiny, as if they had been polished, and trembled faintly. She was wearing a pink tank top, a white skirt, and the brace on her leg with a single high white sock beneath it. Her other leg was bare or shoes or socks. 

She had beautiful legs and wonderful sculpted shoulders. He found himself wondering what her face looked like.

He watched the arch of her long thin pale arms as she cooked something on the stove. There appeared to be no one else in the house.

With a momentary lapse in judgment and spike of bravery, he stepped into the kitchen with her. 

“Good morning,” she said without turning around. “I was wondering when you’d come in. You’ve been standing there for quite some time.”

His heart began to pound against his ribcage, knocking loudly and impossibly fast.

Suddenly, she said, “Please forgive my appearance this morning. My leg is feeling particularly weak and painful today. I don’t often use the wheelchair, but I do when it’s completely necessary.” 

He wasn’t sure what to say or even if he should speak.

“My name is Sakura,” she continued. “What’s yours?”

Again, he hesitated. Should he tell the truth or lie, just make something up? 

She turned in her wheelchair and his eyes crashed to the floor.

“I don’t have one,” he whispered.

“What?” A distressed sound emerged from her throat. “You… have no name…?”

“If it pleases you, master,” he whispered.

“It does not please me.”

He bit the corner of his lip hard between his teeth and tasted blood. The tear in his lip had opened again and he quickly licked his lips to catch the blood. He felt a single drop roll down his chin and tried to catch it in his cupped hands, but it slipped through his fingers and splattered on the floor. 

Sakura turned her wheelchair and he felt her eyes on his bloodied hands. An apology was burning on his tongue as she rolled across the floor to stop in front of him. 

“Oh God,” she whispered and took his hands in her own. “It’s not your fault. That’s not what I meant, please. It’s alright.” 

He shivered and the tremor wracked his hands in hers.

“Please, it’s okay,” she murmured. “It’s alright. How about nicknames? Do you have any nicknames?”

He shook his head.

“Well, what does everyone call you?”

He wet his lips, tasting blood, and hesitated. “…Brat,” he whispered, “and fuck-toy…”

Sakura rubbed his icy skin between her palms. “Does anyone ever call you anything… nice?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head again and squeezed his eyes shut.

“Would you… like a name?” she whispered.

His eyes fluttered open of their own accord and he stared at their hands. His crimson blood was smeared across her white skin and his flesh looked like cracked parchment against her rosy tone. He wet his lips again. The bleeding had stopped, but his lips were crackly and itchy with dried blood. Then, hesitantly, he nodded.

Instantly, his mind was flooded with names she might give him. All horrible wretched rotten names… _Dog, cock, slave, worthless brat, dick…_

But she said none of these or anything worse. 

Gently, she rubbed the scars on his wrists and then said quietly, “How about Syaoran?”

_Syaoran…_

“It means strength,” she continued.

It was a beautiful name, not something he was worthy of.

He weakly shook his head, but the words that emerged from his mouth spoke another idea. “If it pleases you, master,” he whispered.

She squeezed his hands. “It’s your name. It only matters if you like it,” she murmured. “So, do you like it?”

He swallowed and then hesitantly nodded.

 _Syaoran…_

He had a name now. It was his name, his own, his only possession, all his. He found himself wanting to protect it from anyone who wanted to take it from him. There was a special something about having something that’s all your own when you’ve never had anything of your own before. 

_It means strength._

“Okay, then, Syaoran,” Sakura said and she sounded like she was smiling. “Let’s have some breakfast.”

He jerkily nodded and she released his hands. 

Then, she rotated her wheelchair and went back to what was cooking on the stove. He stepped up behind her and gently laid the pads of his fingertips on the handles of her chair. Then, realizing what he was doing, he snapped his hands back to his sides. 

...

For a long moment, they stood quietly in the kitchen while Sakura cooked whatever she was cooking in the pan.

“Would you get down some plates, please? Second cupboard from the sink,” she said suddenly.

He nodded, got the plates, and set them down neatly at her elbow next to the stove. 

“I’m making omelets,” Sakura said and suddenly swooped the omelet onto one of the plates. Then, she cracked three more eggs, whipped them in a bowl with some milk, and then poured them into the hot pan. “Push the toast down, please.” 

He moved and pushed down the button. Then, he returned to her side.

When the toast popped, she asked him to splash some butter on it. Then, she finished the omelet and slid it onto a plate. “Alright,” she murmured. “Let’s eat. Grab the plate of toast please.” She put the omelets on her lap, carefully arranging the plates so the food didn’t slide off, and wheeled herself to the kitchen table. She set out the plates, nudged the chair that she normally sat in aside, and wheeled her chair into the empty space. “Have a seat, please, Syaoran.”

A little shiver ran down his spine at the sound of his name. His name. He found he rather liked the sound of it.

He sat next to her, set the plate of toast down, and she pushed a plate in front of him. 

“Dig in,” she said and cut a big bite from her omelet.

Starving, Syaoran bit into the omelet. It was all meat and cheese—sausage and ham and cheddar cheese and neatly chopped spinach. He hadn’t eaten so much of anything in his entire life. He was used to his stomach growling emptily and his body weak from hunger. Again, within moments, he had cleaned his plate.

“Have some toast,” Sakura murmured and placed a tower of three pieces on his plate. The final piece she left on the plate.

He dug in, crunching noisily. Hot butter ran down his arm and he quickly wiped his skin on his shirt. 

Then, contentedly full, he sat back and watched her long-fingered hands as she delicately ate. Her hands were trembling, shaking. Then, he noticed her gnawed fingers were bloodied and raw. She had torn the flesh from around her nails, leaving them swollen and bloody. 

He looked down at his own hands, scarred and equally wounded. 

He thought of her leg, wrapped in that metal brace, and her limping hobbling walk. 

He wondered what had happened to her, but he would never ask. 

He was a slave and she was a master. No matter how kind she was, there was a rift between them. 

He could never speak to her without invitation.

He could never look at her.

He could never know the color of her eyes.

He could never touch her unless ordered.

Yet, at the slightest provocation, she could have his body, his life, his blood, and his flesh. 

After all, like his name, he was her possession.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	4. The Trip of Steel

I have a pet toad.

I’m watching Sweeny Todd: a violent musical.

I’m having relationship issues and have therefore eaten my weight in ice cream, potato chips, chocolate, and apple juice today.

I also am wearing Tinker Bell pajamas. 

I’m a WRECK!

Wow. Anyway, moving on…

X X X

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” Sakura said and the words sent a stab of sudden fear down his spine. She wheeled herself back from the table. “Could you put the plates in the sink for me, please?”

Syaoran stacked the plates, carried them gingerly, and set them quietly in the sink. 

“I’m sure you saw the bathroom attached to your bedroom. There’re some towels under the sink and a toothbrush, toothpaste, a comb, and other toiletries in one of the drawers. You’ll have to look around for anything else you need. Everything is in there somewhere. Shampoo, conditioner, and a razor are already in the shower,” she paused. Maybe she was smiling at him. “If you need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask me, okay?”

He nodded and started to walk down the hall.

“Syaoran?”

He froze, half turning to face her. 

“Nothing, never mind. Please, just let me know if you need anything.”

…

The bathroom was painted pale cream and tiled all in pale golden yellow. The vanity was swirling gold and green marble with shiny golden faucets. The single big window was decorated with stained glass and framed by white lace curtains, the shower curtain bore the sunny visage of a burgeoning garden, and there was a blown glass vase of yellow and pink tulips. It was peaceful, beautiful.

“Do you like it, Syaoran?”

Her voice startled him. He hadn’t heard her chair on the hardwood floor rolling up behind him.

“We could change anything you want in this room. These are your rooms, after all. I want you to feel comfortable here,” she murmured and sounded for the entire world that she meant everything she said. 

He nodded.

She rolled into the bathroom behind him, reached through the shower curtain, and started the water. “I… I really do wish you’d say something…”

“I’m sorry, master,” he said instantly.

She sighed heavily. “After you get cleaned up, we’re going to the mall to do some shopping. We’re meeting up with a few of my friends, so please don’t put those clothes back on. I’ll bring you some clothes and leave them on your bed for you, alright?”

“Yes, master,” he said quietly.

She sighed again and rolled herself carefully backwards. “Please, get cleaned up,” she said finally and left. He heard his door close quietly.

Then, he stripped out of his slave garb, wincing as a rip slithered through the threadbare shirt, and cautiously ventured a hand beneath the spray. Shock had him snatching his hand back immediately. The water was warm! Water was never a warm comfortable temperature. It was either scalding hot or icy cold, but she had set the temperature herself so there could be no mistake.

Puzzled, he got out a fluffy towel and stepped into the shower. The water swirled down the drain thick with dirt and dried blood. He scrubbed his fingers through his hair and over his face. His lips split open again and the warm water burned the wounds on is wrists. Whimpering in pain, he scoured the rest of his skin ferociously. Then, he washed his skin with the soft sweet-smelling soap and worked the shampoo into a rich lather in his hair. Content that he was clean enough to appease his new master, he shut off the water and stepped out. 

He dried off without looking at his skeleton reflection in the mirror, wrapped the towel around his waist, and stepped out into the bedroom. A small stack of clothing was waiting for him next to the pillows. Feeling vulnerable in his nudity, he dressed quickly in the jeans and pulled the t-shirt down over his head without a care for the wet state of his hair. The shirt hung off his frame and the waistband of the jeans just barely caught on the sharp bones of his hips. He pushed his feet back into his worn shoes, returned to the bathroom to comb his wet hair and brush his teeth.

As clean as he had ever been, he hung his towel neatly over the shower rod, folded his filthy clothes up and placed them on the vanity, and left the room.

…

Sakura was in the kitchen, sitting in her wheelchair and talking quietly to someone he couldn’t see. As it was, he could only see the bony curve of her shoulder and part of the back of her chair, but he could hear every word she was saying.

“He didn’t have a name, Yuzuriha-chan.” Sakura was saying in a rather distressed tone of voice.

“I know, Sakura-chan. They normally don’t. Ryuo-kun didn’t either when I first got him,” another young feminine voice said and he heard a deep sigh. 

“Please, tell me he’ll get better with time, like Ryuo-kun did.”

“Your Syaoran-san doesn’t know it yet, but he has the best person to heal with. You’re amazing, Sakura-chan. No one is better than you, except maybe me.” There was a girlish giggle.

He heard Sakura begin to laugh as well. 

When the giggling quieted down, he heard Sakura say almost nervously, “Do you really think I can help him, Yuzuriha-chan?”

“Of course you can, Sakura-chan. Just give it time.” They were quiet for a moment. “One more thing, Sakura-chan. What kind of slave is he?”

“He’s a…” Sakura seemed to be hesitating. “…a sex slave…”

“WHAT?!” There was a lot of gasping and wheezing. “You bought a sex slave? Why?!”

“I don’t know, Yuzuriha-chan. The auctioneer grabbed his face and his eyes were rolling back in his head. I just saw him standing up there on that platform with his face all bruised and his body all bloody and something in him just called to me. I just… wanted to help him… With all my heart, I just want to help him…”

“You have a great heart, Sakura-chan. If anyone can help him, it’s you.”

“Thank you, Yuzuriha-chan. I really needed that,” Sakura murmured.

…

Syaoran leaned his forehead against the wall and sighed heavily. A shudder ran down his spine and then he felt the soft touch on his back. He practically leaped out of his skin in shock and terror.

There was a young man standing behind him. Like Syaoran, he had scars lacing around and around his wrists and up his arms to disappear beneath the sleeves of his t-shirt. His body was trim and lean, but solidly muscled. His red-brown hair was long and almost raggedly cut and there was a white swath of bandages wrapped around his head, pushing his hair up in tufts and spikes. He had bright green eyes, vibrant, lively, not the eyes of a slave yet the scars displayed that he most certainly was or had been.

“Hey, you must be Syaoran-san? Sakura-chan told us all about you,” he said cheerfully and clasped his hands neatly behind his back. “How do the clothes fit? Sakura-chan thought you were about my size and asked me to bring you over something decent.”

Syaoran tried to speak, but his voice came out a whisper, “Th-these are yours…?”

Ryuo nodded and grinned. “Yup.” Then, his green eyes grew very serious. “So, what kind are you?”

“S-sex.”

Ryuo lowered his eyes down Syaoran’s body and back up again. “Aah,” was all he said. “Yuzuriha-chan got me from the work house. A plantation, nice place, but one of the managers had issues. I was beaten to a bloody pulp when she got me.”

Syaoran murmured sympathetically. He knew how that was, being beaten blue and bloody and raw, having it hurt to breathe. 

Ryuo put a warm hand on his shoulder and Syaoran flinched. Immediately, Ryuo lowered his hands, but said quietly, “I know you won’t believe me, but you have a wonderful master. Sakura-chan is a beautiful gentle person and she’s been hurt badly by someone she loved and trusted so she will never hurt you.”

Syaoran stared at the floor, unable to allow his heart to rise up to meet the hope this young man was dangling before him.

“Alright,” Ryuo continued. “You’ve been hiding out long enough. I know Yuzuriha-chan wants to meet you.” 

“Yes,” he whispered. 

Then, he and Ryuo went into the kitchen.

…

Sakura was sitting in her chair. She was wearing jeans with her brace fastened down over them and a sweater and purse in her lap. “Hello, Syaoran,” she said cheerfully. “You look nice all cleaned up.”

“Thank you, master,” he whispered.

“Ooh, Sakura-chan, he’s so gorgeous.” The girl’s voice he assumed to belong to Yuzuriha was cheerful, bright, and held no trace of discrimination. Syaoran surveyed her legs. They were bare and lightly tanned, strong and toned, and so long beneath her pleated green schoolgirl skirt. She wore dainty white tennis shoes on her feet and that was all he dared to look at.

“Hey,” Ryuo squawked. 

“You’re handsome, Ryuo-kun,” Yuzuriha said plainly, “but, he’s gorgeous, stunning! He and Sakura-chan make a nice pair, don’t they?” 

Ryuo grumbled.

Sakura said cheerfully, “Come on, Yuzuriha-chan, quit picking on him. Let’s go, everybody!” 

Syaoran watched her put her bloodied hands on the wheels of her chair and begin to roll herself towards the door. She bumped herself up over the threshold easily and then carefully stopped at the top of the front steps. She buoyed herself out of her chair, wobbled a bit on her injured leg, folded her wheelchair neatly, tucked it under her arm, and began the slow hobbling descent down the five steps. Yuzuriha rushed up behind her, yowling, and snatched the chair from Sakura’s arm. She shoved the folded wheelchair at Ryuo and put Sakura’s arm around her shoulders. 

At the bottom of the five steps, Ryuo offered Sakura his hand. She declined, smiling and batting him away. “I’m fine, I’m fine!” she said cheerfully. “Yuzuriha-chan, would you mind driving?”

“No, of course not,” Yuzuriha said equally happily and helped her friend into the passenger seat. 

Ryuo was busily stowing the wheelchair in the trunk. 

“Ryuo-kun, could you get Syaoran?” Sakura called. “And lock up?” Then, she lobbed the keys past Yuzuriha’s head, out the driver’s side window, and into Ryuo’s waiting hands.

“Watch it, Sakura-chan!” Yuzuriha squawked. “You almost knocked my block off!”

Sakura giggled.

Ryuo bounded up the steps, stuck his head inside the house, and shouted, “Yo! Syaoran-san, let’s go!”

Syaoran materialized in the doorway, looking pale and nervous and shifting uneasily from foot to foot. 

Ryuo smiled sympathetically. “It’s alright, Syaoran-san, it’s alright.” Then, he gently took Syaoran by the knobby bony elbow, locked the house, led him to the car, and slipped into the backseat with him. “Alright, Yuzuriha-chan, let’s motor.” 

Staring at his hands where they lay folded in his lap, Syaoran wondering thought about the fantastic familiarity the three of them bestowed upon each other. They were close, even Ryuo who was still a slave as far as Syaoran knew. 

Quietly, the car puttered along down the road. Yuzuriha, Sakura, and Ryuo chatted amicably as they drove. 

Syaoran remained quiet and still as a statue until Sakura asked, “Syaoran, are you alright? You’re awfully quiet.”

“Yes, Master.”

Sakura heaved a deep sigh and Ryuo leaned forward to whisper something in her ear. Sakura shook her head and whispered. Yuzuriha whispered something as well. Then, the quiet conference ended and they each sat back in their seats to resume their cheery conversation. This time it seemed choreographed strictly for his benefit.

Finally, they pulled into the densely packed parking lot of the mall. The cars were like hard candy, shiny and brightly colored. People bustled to and fro from vehicles of all shapes and sizes. There were slaves laden with bags trailing behind haughty looking masters. Parents laden with children and a slave-nurse bustling along beside them. Groups of teens in strange dress, some with slaves and some without. The people were as vibrant and different as anything Syaoran had ever seen though he kept his eyes lowered to the pavement.

Ryuo got her wheelchair out of the trunk, set it down, and opened it for her. Without Yuzuriha’s help, Sakura limped from the car and jockeyed herself into the wheelchair. Then, she put her hands on the wheels and rolled slowly down the slope of the parking lot. Yuzuriha, Ryuo, and Syaoran trailed after her.

A car started to back out, not seeing Sakura in her chair. 

Yuzuriha was trailing far behind Sakura, squabbling with Ryuo. Syaoran was between them and Sakura, absently following after his master. Since he was looking at the ground, he didn’t see the car until Yuzuriha let out a scream. 

“Sakura!” Yuzuriha screamed in panic and horror.

His eyes snapped up immediately and took in the reversing vehicle in an instant. Sakura saw it, too. Violating the rules of slavery, he took in the curve of her face and pale flawless porcelain skin and the light caramel shade of her hair. Then, he saw he mouth twist in a grimace of terror and she brought her hands up to her face as if that would shield her from the coming onslaught of the vehicle.

“Sakura!” Ryuo shouted now. His feet pounded the pavement behind Syaoran and then Syaoran’s body lurched into action.

The muscles in his legs bunched tight and he sprang at the back of her chair. His shoulder slammed into the handles, digging under his collarbone, and his weight propelled it forward so quickly that Sakura’s teeth snapped together with an audible click. Her chair rocketed forward, out of harm’s way, and Syaoran smashed his face into the pavement. 

Without so much as noticing them, the car continued backing up and may have backed right over Syaoran’s vulnerable legs if Ryuo didn’t jump onto the hood and shout at the driver. Yuzuriha barreled around the car, grabbed the handles of Sakura’s wheelchair, and hauled her backwards. With Sakura close by and under her protection, Yuzuriha looped her arms around Syaoran’s battered body and dragged him back from the path of the car. 

“Are you both alright?!” Yuzuriha demanded.

Syaoran’s face was a mess of blood and Yuzuriha quickly cupped her hand over the wound. Sakura nodded weakly and put her bloody hands on the back of Syaoran’s neck, twisting her fingers gently in the soft hairs there.

“Jesus!” Ryuo said and charged around the hood of the car to crouch with Yuzuriha. “Some old biddy. She’s got coke bottle glasses so thick you could see China through them!”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Yuzuriha said. “God, that was scary.”

Sakura gripped Syaoran’s shoulder. “Syaoran, are you okay? Can you stand?”

He nodded weakly and put his hand to the bloodied side of his face, inadvertently laying his palm over Yuzuriha’s. Instantly, he flinched and lowered his hand again from her warm skin. 

“Ryuo-kun, get me a hanky out of my purse please. I dropped it somewhere,” Yuzuriha ordered. 

“Right, okay,” Ryuo said and whirled to find her purse.

“Yuzuriha-chan, here.” Sakura wobbled from her wheelchair and gripped the handles tightly to steady her shaking legs. “Let’s get Syaoran off the pavement.”

“I agree,” Yuzuriha said and hauled Syaoran up under his arms.

He was unsteady on his feet and pressed his hand to the bloody side of his face. Yuzuriha muscled him into Sakura’s wheelchair and then gripped the handles to prevent him from rolling backwards. 

Sakura swayed on her feet and her braced leg trembled. 

“Sakura-chan,” Yuzuriha said worriedly. “You look like you’re about to drop.” She looked from Syaoran to Sakura to the wheelchair and back. “Maybe you could sit on Syaoran-san’s lap or something.”

Sakura swayed again and nearly fell. Ryuo barreled up behind her just in time to catch her by the shoulders and quickly swoop her legs up in his arms, bridal-style. Yuzuriha’s purse hung from the crook of his elbow in an almost ladylike manner. 

“Let’s get you sat down, Sakura-chan,” Ryuo said and gently set her down in Syaoran’s lap. 

Yuzuriha’s face crinkled with distress momentarily, but slackened when Sakura’s head lolled to rest against Syaoran’s long sharp collarbone. He flinched, straining away from the fluttering strands of her pale caramel hair. Then, Yuzuriha took her purse from Ryuo, fished out a handkerchief, and pressed it to the bloody side of Syaoran’s face. The pain seemed to focus him and he relaxed against Sakura. 

“Alright,” Yuzuriha said and turned to Ryuo. “I think we need to head back. Could you stay here and shop for some clothes for Syaoran-san? They don’t have to be perfect, just fit him for the most part. He’s about your size.”

“Yeah, sure, Yuzuriha-chan,” Ryuo said immediately. “No problem.”

Yuzuriha hugged him and whispered, “That was even closer, right?” 

He nodded against her shoulder and squeezed her very tightly. “We would have lost her that time if it wasn’t for Syaoran-san,” he whispered. 

“I think he’ll be good for her,” Yuzuriha whispered.

“And she for him,” Ryuo murmured.

Then, they pulled apart. Together, Yuzuriha and Ryuo packed Sakura and Syaoran away in the backseat of the car. Ryuo stowed the wheelchair in the trunk and Yuzuriha hopped into the driver’s seat. She told Ryuo she’d be back to pick him up and then drove away. He stood watching the fading taillights and thinking of his own battered terrified body when Yuzuriha first bought him. Then, he took some money from his pocket, counted it out, and turned to head into the mall. 

…

In the car, Yuzuriha thought of what had happened to Sakura. She thought of the images that still plagued her friend in her nightmares and the thoughts that relentlessly bounced through Yuzuriha’s head at the horrors Sakura had suffered through and how Sakura hadn’t even told her all of what had happened to her. 

Sakura was a beautiful wonderful person, but she had been hurt so badly, too badly, horribly.

Syaoran was a spectacularly broken young man and he had been torn apart by life itself.

They had both suffered so terribly, but maybe with each other they would have a chance to heal.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	5. A Broken Heart Opens

Blarg. There is nothing but apple juice in my fridge! I’m not two! I want grape juice! Grr! I’m so mature, yes?

X X X

Syaoran came back to his senses as they pulled into the driveway. The side of his face was sticky and stiff and hurt as if his head had taken a good knock. For a moment, he puzzled about what had happened. Then the memory of the scent of Sakura’s pale caramel hair tickled his nose and everything came crashing down around him like a house of cards. 

He tore Yuzuriha’s handkerchief away from his face in panic, tearing open the way the wound had seal to the cloth. Hot blood coursed down his neck and he immediately slammed his bare palm over the injury again. Beside him, Sakura turned in her seat and murmured, “Syaoran, what’s wrong?”

His heart clenched in his chest in terror. He had touched her without permission, touched her! 

“Hey, hey, shh, it’s alright,” Sakura whispered and laid her palm gently on his thigh. “We’re on our way home. Ryuo-kun is going to drop some clothes off for you a little later, alright?”

He nodded weakly. It was all he could do to keep from hyperventilating. His heart was hammering so fast he thought it would break out of his chest.

“How’s your head, Syaoran-san?” Yuzuriha asked as she signaled to turn into Sakura’s driveway.

“F-fine,” he whispered.

“How’s the bleeding look, Sakura-chan?”

Sakura’s warm fingers probed the raw edges of the wound around Syaoran’s hand. “It started again, but only because he pulled the hanky off,” she said finally and lowered her hand to her lap. Her fingers glistened red with his blood. “He’ll be alright. I don’t think we need to go to the hospital so long as he doesn’t grow feverish.”

“Pavement is very filthy,” Yuzuriha agreed.

Sakura nodded and then mumbled, “I can’t believe that happened. I should have been paying attention.”

“That old lady shouldn’t have been on the road!” Yuzuriha snapped and put the car in park. “Okay, everybody out. Syaoran-san, could you get Sakura-chan’s chair from the trunk?”

Syaoran scrambled quickly from the car, but the second he stood, his head whirled. Staggering, he bumped into the car and stood for a moment, staring at his hands and trying to get his vision to stop swimming. When it finally cleared, he hustled to the back to the car.

Yuzuriha popped the trunk and then went up the five steps to unlock the door.

Syaoran brought the chair around to Sakura’s side where she was patiently waiting with the door open. He set the chair down, hesitated, and then offered his hand. Sakura took his warm grip immediately and jockeyed herself unsteadily into her wheelchair. Then, she gave his fingers a pleasant squeeze and gripped the wheels to propel herself forward. At the stairs, Yuzuriha was waiting. She looped an arm around Sakura’s shoulders, helped her up the steps, and then waited again for Syaoran to lift the wheelchair. Then, Sakura eased herself back into the chair and rolled into the house.

“Alright, then, Syaoran-san, I’m going to shove off and go back to the mall to pick up Ryuo-kun,” Yuzuriha said and handed him Sakura’s car keys. “We’ll stop by a little later with some clothes for you, okay?”

He nodded.

For a moment, Yuzuriha appeared to be at war with herself, then she shook her head, and walked away to her car. He watched her pull out of the driveway, wondering if she had planned to hug him as she had Ryuo. Maybe his new master had just arranged a foursome of some sort.

Syaoran shivered.

Inside, Sakura was busily sorting herself out of her jacket and hanging it in the closet. “Well, that was exciting, wasn’t it?” She asked.

“Yes, master,” Syaoran said immediately.

Sakura sighed. “Okay, Syaoran, we need to talk.”

His entire body tensed in fear and anticipation of a beating for touching her earlier. He shivered.

Sakura gripped the wheels of her chair and rolled herself into the living room. There, she carefully limped to the plush leather sofa and sank into the cushions with a sigh. “Come, sit with me,” she murmured.

Shuddering in dread, Syaoran went into the living room after her, but rather than sitting beside her on the couch, he knelt at her feet with is head bowed.

Sakura sighed again. “I meant here on the couch with me, Syaoran.”

He flinched.

“It’s fine,” she murmured and gently put her hand on the top of his head. “Listen, I have to explain something to you.” She paused, almost hesitating. “I didn’t buy you to hurt you or to use you. I need… protection and companionship since… what happened. Sometimes, I need help because of my leg.” Tenderly, she slipped her fingers beneath his chin and tried to raise his face, but he resisted.

Syaoran wasn’t sure he could dare believe what he was hearing. His heart hammered against his ribs and he felt lightheaded. Sakura’s soft warm fingers were stroking through is hair, gently, lightly, not pulling or ripping at the locks or digging her fingernails into his scalp as his past master had done. Then, she had her hand beneath his chin, trying to lift his head. He resisted, but it was halfhearted. He wanted so badly to believe her, so badly, more than anything else he had ever wanted in his entire life.

“I just… I want you to be my friend, Syaoran,” Sakura continued. 

This time, when she tried to raise his face, he allowed her, but kept his eyes closed. Her fingertip traced the shell of the wound on his face gently, not gouging it apart to bleed anew as past masters would have done. 

“I’m so sorry you got hurt today,” she whispered. Her voice was thick and choked, as if she was crying.

Hesitantly, Syaoran’s amber eyes slid open and he looked up into the illuminated peony of her face. She was truly beautiful and, when she saw his eyes on her, she did not strike him or grin wickedly at the thought so punishments to come, she simply smiled with true happiness. 

Her features were delicately sculpted and as beautiful as if she had been airbrushed by a talented artist, flawless. Her skin was the color of fine porcelain and framed by short not-quite-shoulder-length caramel tresses. She had big and innocent jade-green eyes fringed with pale lashes so long they shadowed her face. Slow crystal-clear tears made slow paths down her cheeks to gather beneath her chin. Her lips were pink as candy and parted slightly and curved by her wonderful smile. But there was the telltale slight touch of tragedy in her face. There were faint shadows beneath her eyes and a healed scar in the corner of her mouth. She had suffered, been through hell.

“Hey, Syaoran,” she whispered and smiled through her tears. “You have beautiful eyes.”

A faint flush rushed into his face. For some reason, the fact that she found some part of him beautiful really made him happy. 

“Actually, all of you is beautiful,” she whispered and threaded her fingers through his chocolate locks. She rubbed his scalp in a massage, working some of the tension from his body. 

He leaned against her legs and her brace dug into his flesh. He didn’t care though. She was touching him so kindly, gently, making touching feel good instead of terribly painful. Hot coals could have been set beneath his feet and he still would not have moved for the world.

He wasn’t sure how long they sat like that—he at her feet, she with her fingers wrapped through his hair, but it felt like an eternity. He could have died happy right then and there, but the doorbell sounded cheerfully through the house. Rousing as if from sleep, Sakura yawned and stretched, taking her warm hands from him. He almost whimpered at the loss of contact.

“Master?” he whispered.

Sakura smiled at him and a warm feeling spread through his chest. He always, always wanted to see her smile. “Syaoran, do you think you could call me Sakura? Please?”

He bit his lip nervously and worried it between his teeth. Then, quickly while he still had his courage, he nodded and whispered timidly, “Sakura-sama?”

A bit of worry flit across her features and then vanished. 

“Th-thank you… so much…” he whispered.

Sakura smiled and cupped his face in her hands. “No, thank you, Syaoran. You saved my life today,” she murmured.

A hesitant smile graced his features and then faded because she staggered into her wheelchair and the thought to ask her what had happened was on the tip of his tongue. 

“Shall we answer the door, Syaoran-kun?” she asked and he didn’t miss the honorific. She saw him as a person, not a slave, and maybe she always had. 

Smiling, he followed after her, but when she pulled open the door, it wasn’t Ryuo or Yuzuriha waiting on the other side.

X X X

Dun, dun, dun.

Cliffhanger!

I’m so evil!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	6. The Night Terrors

This story gets a lot of hits and a lot of reviews. I remember when I first started out on this website and it drove me bonkers how no one reviews. Still no one reviews, it’s the same ten or so people all the time, but I’m so happy for your feed back! I love my reviewers!

This chapter it for you!

X X X

If Syaoran had opened the door, he might have attacked the big man on sight because he was just so happy to have someone who seemed to care for him that he would protect Sakura to the death without the slightest hesitation. But, as it was, Sakura opened the door and squealed, “Kurogane-san!” when she laid jade-green eyes on the big man’s crimson orbs.

“Hey, Princess,” he grunted and hefted a sack of clothes. “I caught that peppy girl and the dragon boy at the driveway. They asked me to bring this up for you.” 

“It’s odd for Yuzuriha-chan not to come up here herself. I wonder what kept her,” Sakura said as she took the sack from Kurogane.

“Some kind of sudden emergency,” Kurogane said and stepped in through the threshold. He was so tall he almost considered ducking so as to not hit his head.

Kurogane was a big, heavily muscled man though his frame was lean and wiry. He had a strong face and firm square jaw. His hair was dark and a few strands hung messily in his face, shadowing his crimson blood-colored eyes. He wore all black, true to his name. Though he was big, he appeared graceful, like a black panther, like a hunter. He pushed some hair back out of his face with one big hand and Syaoran almost took a step back. Kurogane could break him in half like a twig with his bare hands if he suddenly got the inclination.

For a moment, they surveyed each other. Their eyes met, held in some staring match, but Syaoran looked away first. He laid his eyes nervously on Sakura, but she was staring worriedly off into space, surely worried for Yuzuriha and Ryuo. 

“So, this is your new kid,” Kurogane said finally.

“It’s not very fair to call him new,” Sakura chided and rolled herself backwards a bit. “He’s the first.”

“The last?”

Sakura rolled her shoulders.

Syaoran gazed at her, puzzled.

“Have you eaten yet, Kurogane-san?”

“No, but I can’t stay to long. That idiot called me fourteen times, demanding I come down and check on you while he was at work. I think he intends to stop in tomorrow, so be prepared for that,” Kurogane grumbled.

Sakura smiled. “What do you have against Fai-san?”

Kurogane shrugged. “He’s a moron.” 

Sakura giggled. “Alright, thanks for the warning. If you run into Yuzuriha-chan or Ryuo-kun, ask them to give me a call, please.”

“Can do,” the big man said. Then, he ducked back through the threshold and quietly closed the door behind him.

Syaoran let his breath out in a rush.

“That’s Kurogane-san,” Sakura explained and she turned her chair around carefully. “He’s an old friend of the family. He checks on me almost every day, but he said he’ll relax it to once a week or so if I got a slave.”

Syaoran lowered his eyes.

“Please, Syaoran-kun, don’t look at the floor. I didn’t buy you just for that,” she whispered. “Everything I said to you is true.” Suddenly, her face lit up. “I tell you what! We’ll make a promise. I promise never ever to lie to you,” she said proudly and held out her pinky, curved slightly and waiting for his.

He wet his lips and then nervously bit his lower one. Then, finally, he said, “I will also never lie to you.”

“Ah,” Sakura began, but then she smiled. “Alright.”

They wrapped their pinkies around each other’s and made a short shake.

“You can never break a pinky promise,” Sakura said. 

Syaoran smiled faintly. “Alright,” he whispered.

“Good, let’s have some dinner! Are you hungry?”

Syaoran hesitated and Sakura turned in her chair to look over her shoulder at him sternly.

“I am, Sakura-sama,” he said finally.

She smiled and rolled herself into the kitchen.

...

Syaoran was tucked neatly in his bed. He was showered and dressed in clean clothes with his teeth brushed and his belly nicely full. He hadn’t been beaten, raped, or molested. Sakura cared for him, wanted him as a friend, and called him -kun. He had never been so happy in his entire life. Within moments, he dropped deeply off to sleep, but was woken in the night by the sound of Sakura crying out in her sleep.

For a moment, he wondered if he had woken himself with his own cries for nightmares plagued him frequently, but sometimes escaped him the moment he awoke. Normally, nightmares left a clammy sheen on sweat on his skin. Now, though, his body was dry and relaxed and warm.

He sat up in bed, holding his breath and listening for the sound to come again.

Finally, after he was almost asleep again, it returned. 

It was a quiet whimper, nearly inaudible, but was filled with such gut-wrenching terror that Syaoran felt it racing up his own throat. Then, he heard a timid terrified little voice pleading, “Please, don’t… please, don’t hurt me… please!” There was a soft cry of pain, stifled, but the agony was thick in it.

Immediately, Syaoran pulled back the covers, swung his legs out of the warm bed, and put his cold feet on the floor. Quietly, he eased open his bedroom door and peaked out. The sounds were louder in the hallway, but still muffled and they were coming from Sakura’s room. He was sure of that now.

Edging silently down the hallway, he hesitated at her door.

“…please, don’t… please!” Another one of her painful anguished little cries crept under the door, wrapped in the scarf of her terrified voice.

Unable to allow her to suffer in her dreams, he timidly opened the door and peaked inside. 

Moonlight was streaming through her curtains, falling across the floor and the lower half of the bed like a checker board, and her bedside lamp had been left on, spilling warm amber light throughout her room. Discarded on the floor was a worn paperback book, crumpled open on a page about midway through. Beside her bed were her wheelchair and her brace, waiting for her when she woke in the morning like patient servants. 

Sakura was lying on her side on her bed with her pale hair fanned out across the pillows. She slept in long cotton pants and a tank top, showing a minimal amount of skin. Her brown was wrinkled and her pink mouth was twisted into a grimace.

Emboldened, Syaoran eased the door open all the way and slipped into the room. He retrieved her book and laid it carefully on her wheelchair with her brace.

Again, she cried out and suddenly her entire body seized up. Something grabbed her hands and wrenched them over her head, pinning them against the pillows. She struggled against this hold, bending and twisting her body at strange angles trying to escape.

“Please, no… don’t, no… please, don’t!”

Violently, her words were choked off, as if someone was wrapping a hand around her narrow throat. Syaoran could see her pulse hammering away beneath the thin layer of skin. Her chest heaved and jerked as if she was struggling to draw breath, but Syaoran could see no one attacking her. 

She appeared to suffer from violent nightmares.

He was hesitant to wake her tough she was clearly in pain. How would he explain being here in her room without permission?

Her head whipped to the side, tears swelled on her lashes, and she suddenly was able to heave in a deep breath. Choking and wheezing, she returned to struggling against whatever unseen force had her hands pinned to the pillows. She was clenching her jaw so tightly that the tendons and muscles stood out.

“No!” She screamed and suddenly lurched up in her bed. 

Syaoran stumbled away from her, shocked and frightened. He nearly tripped over his own feet and went sprawling, but managed to keep his balance.

Her shoulders trembled and shook and she slowly brought her shaking hands to her face. She appeared not to see Syaoran and simply sobbed into her long fingered hands. She drew her good leg up against her body, tucking it neatly alongside her, but the lame one remained stretched uselessly on the bed. Leaving the light on, Sakura collapsed against her pillows on her side. She wrapped her arms around her legs and pressed her face into her knees. She continued crying and presumably cried herself to sleep for her back continued shaking and trembling for a long time before finally growing still and falling back into a light even breathing pattern.

Troubled, Syaoran left her room and quietly closed the door. 

Back in his own room, sleep did not find him so easily again.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	7. The Preface of Pain

Everyone wants to know what happens to Sakura! Never fear, the truth will be revealed, but all in good time… in its own sweet time. So sit back, relax, and stop asking me what happened to her! So, now that that ugly little secret is out…

X X X

The morning dawned in the pouring grey curtain of torrential rain. Thunder growled and roared in the distance and lightning flared and flashed. The rain pounded against the windows like phantom fingers, knocking, knocking, as if trying to get in. 

Syaoran woke up still feeling rested even though he hadn’t been able to sleep since Sakura’s cries had woken him. He was used to operating under very little sleep and the few undisturbed wonderful hours would be enough to keep him going all day. Stretching his arms high above his head, he got out of bed and went to the dresser Sakura had helped him put the clothes Ryuo had purchased and Kurogane brought into. He pulled out a pair of clean jeans and had to resist the urge to slip into the dirty jeans he had worn yesterday.  
Once he was dressed, had brushed his teeth, and splashed some water on his face, he slipped quietly from his room.

The house was quiet and dark.

Syaoran went quickly and quietly through the rooms, but he couldn’t find Sakura. Maybe she was still asleep, he decided, and went to listen at her door. He heard a few quiet distressed sounds coming from inside and hesitantly knocked.

Immediately, the sounds were silenced and Sakura’s voice whispered, “Raitei? Is that you?” 

Startled, for a moment, Syaoran didn’t answer. Then, he heard Sakura begin to cry again and there was great distress and anguish in her sobs. Gathering his courage, he turned the doorknob and gently eased the door open.

“No!” Sakura screamed. “Please, Raitei-sama! Please, don’t!”

Someone must be in the room with Sakura!

Syaoran hurled the door open and her stricken eyes met his in an instant. A scream tore from her mouth and then faded into and choking, sputtering gasp. 

“S-Syaoran-kun,” she whispered with great relief. “It’s… it’s only you. Thank goodness.” Then, she scrubbed her face with her hands as if trying to wash the terror from her features. With a deep sigh, she held out her arms and almost begged him, “Please, will you come here?”

Syaoran went to her and she drew him against her body. 

“Thank you,” she whispered into his shoulder and clutched him tightly. She inhaled deeply the scent of him as if drawing him into her heart, into her body.

She was shivering, trembling like a leaf in high winds. Her teeth chattered.

“Sakura-sama…” Syaoran hesitated, but continued when she dug her fingers into his back in desperation. “Are you cold?”

She shook her head. “No, no… I just… had a bad dream…” she whispered and gripped him tighter. “Could you just sit here with me for a moment, Syaoran-kun?”

“Of course,” he murmured and timidly wrapped his arms around her trembling shoulders. 

She leaned hard into him, still gripping him tightly in her slender arms. 

After a long moment, he whispered, “Who’s Raitei?”

Sakura shook her head. “He’s… I’ll tell you… some other time… Alright, Syaoran-kun…?”

He nodded nervously. That could have gone badly. If she had become enraged at his question, she could have beaten or starved him. He let a breath he didn’t know he had been holding out in a rush. Then, he gripped Sakura’s body tightly against his frame and thanked a God he ceased to believe in that she was such a beautiful kind young woman.

Thunder crashed and lightning lit up the dark skies.

Finally, Sakura pushed lightly on Syaoran’s chest, putting some distance between their bodies. He took a step back from her immediately though she remained close to him, gripping his hands tightly in her own with an uncanny desperation. 

“Thank you, Syaoran-kun,” she murmured. 

He inclined his head and whispered, “It is my pleasure to serve you, Sakura-sama.”

She released her breath in a great shuddering gasp and smiled rather falsely at him. “Alright, Syaoran-kun, what do you say we have some breakfast?”

He nodded. “That would be nice,” he murmured.

Sakura continued, “Just let me get dressed and I’ll be ready.”

Syaoran nodded and turned to leave. As he closed the door, he glimpsed Sakura pulling up her pajamas to slide her stocking on before putting on her brace. Her leg was a mess of bumpy white scars at the ankle. Long thin lacerations ran from ankle to knee. That was all he glimpsed before the door shut. 

…

Shortly after breakfast, someone barreled through the door, yowling. “Sakura-chan! Sakura-chan!”

Sakura was at the sink, standing on her braced leg and doing the dishes absently while Syaoran shuffled things from the table back to their proper places at her direction. When a tall lanky blonde barreled into the kitchen, Syaoran immediately perceived him as no threat–unlike Kurogane–and continued tucking the milk away in the fridge. 

The blonde string bean wrapped both his long arms around Sakura and hugged her tightly. 

“Fai-san,” Sakura shrieked and flailed about in his hold.

Syaoran noticed her one leg thrashed and struggled as much as the rest of her, but the braced one hung as limp as a wet noodle. It was useless and he wondered if it was completely paralyzed. His mind wandered back to the image of the twisted white scar around her ankle that was permanently burned into his brain. 

“Put me down!” Sakura squealed, giggling. “Put me down this instant, Fai-san!”

Finally, when Syaoran glanced over at him suspiciously, the blonde set Sakura carefully back on her feet. She had to grip the counter to steady herself as her body was wracked with giggles. She looked at Syaoran and he saw something guarded and nervous in her jade-green eyes.

“So, Sakura-chan, this is the famed Syaoran-san I’ve heard so much about,” the blonde man continued and surveyed Syaoran with his ice-blue eyes. “Wonderful eyes… a touch too skinny, but I’m sure you’ll straighten that out… strong heart… good hands… and very attractive,” Fai finished with a wink.

Syaoran squirmed, tightening his fingers around the salt and pepper shakers. 

“Fai-san, stop it! You’re making him uncomfortable!” Sakura chided and loaded the last plate into the dishwasher. Then, she leaned over and closed it with a snap. “Syaoran-kun, let’s go into the living room,” she said and held out her hand for him to take.

Syaoran put the salt and pepper shakers away in the correct cabinet and then carefully grasped Sakura’s elbow. Gently, only half supporting her, he helped her limp into the living room with Fai trailing behind them. Once they had all sank into the cushions of Sakura’s furniture—Syaoran in the overstuffed armchair across from Fai and Sakura on the sofa—Fai hugged Sakura again a little less vigorously.

“How are you holding up, Sakura-chan?” Fai asked and pulled back from their hug to tuck a strand of pale caramel hair behind her ear. 

“I’m fine, Fai-san,” she said. “I’m doing much better with Syaoran-kun here to help me.” She sent her slave a winning smile and Syaoran felt heat creeping through his chest.

Fai smiled also. “I’m glad. Well, seeing you, I guess I should have listened to Kuronpuu,” he said with a sigh.

Sakura smiled even wider and explained quickly to Syaoran, “Fai-san likes to give Kurogane-san all these strange nicknames just to make him mad.”

“Oh,” Syaoran said and allowed a faint grin to grace his lips.

Fai sighed dramatically again. “Well, seeing as you’re getting along just fine, Sakura-chan, I guess I’ll be going.”

“You could stay for a while if you’d like, Fai-san,” Sakura offered.

“No, no. That’s quite alright. I have an early shift at the hospital today anyway.”

Sakura bit her lip and then turned to Syaoran. “Could you go get my chair for me, Syaoran-kun?”

He nodded, rose from the armchair, and hurried to her bedroom to fetch her wheelchair from her bedside. As he left the room, he saw Sakura lean forward and put her face close to Fai’s. 

He heard her whisper, “Have they caught him?” and saw Fai sadly shake his head.

Then, they vanished around the corner of the wall and he glimpsed no more of their conversation.

After short goodbyes, Fai left, running through the pouring rain to his car. Sakura sat in her chair in the open threshold for a long moment, watching Fai’s dwindling headlights. Then, Syaoran rested his hands on the handles of her chair and pulled her gently away from the door as lightning knifed through the ink-black stormy sky.

“Syaoran-kun,” Sakura whispered.

“Yes, Sakura-sama?”

“There’s something I need to tell you…”

…

In the grungy hotel at the limits of the city, a slimy green thing slithered across the worn ugly carpet. It was plump and thick, like a snake that had just gorged itself on a fat rat. Another glided across the hideous filthy comforter on the sunken mattress. Six others slunk in the shadows of the dirty little room. Unattached and undisturbed, they had free reign of the naked body strewn on the bed, but without the guidance of their master, they had no reason and no desire to ravage it.

The master was in the shower, his singing muted by both the rattling pipes that fed water to the shower and the pounding rain outside.

One slick thing inched up the body’s naked leg and then curled contentedly at the dip of warmth in its belly. 

The naked body shifted and groaned, but did not wake.

The master cleaned himself of the day’s tasks.

The eight tentacles slithered.

X X X

I was going to wait to start revealing stuff, but Syaoran came around so quickly that I don’t have much to do with him and Sakura so I guess this story gets kicked into high gear.   
That and I keep pushing out a bunch of really short chapters.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	8. The Scars on Her

Grah! The story of the scars…

X X X

They went to sit in the living room, once again sinking into the plush cushions of the sofa. Sakura jockeyed herself from her chair and onto the couch without Syaoran’s help and he perched delicately on the space next to her.

Sakura wrung her hands and Syaoran noticed that her cuticles were freshly gnawed until they started bleeding. Her fingertips were red and swollen, irritated and almost infected looking. She clenched her slender fingers into fists and put them tightly in her lap. 

“There’s something I need to tell you…” she murmured.

Syaoran felt his blood turn to ice in his veins.

“I had hoped never to have to talk about it again. This was all supposed to be over… over a long time ago,” she whispered and then shook her head sorrowfully. “But they haven’t caught him yet. He’s still loose.” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “I can get you out of here if you want. I can send you to stay with Yuzuriha-chan and Ryuo-kun behind their gated mansion walls. Just, let me tell you and then you can decide what you want to do.”

Sakura shivered again and her teeth chattered. She ran her hands along her braced leg, picking at the buckles on it with her fingernails. It must have hurt her bloodied fingers because she grimaced in pain, twisting her mouth. Then, she continued speaking with a wavering and weak resolve.

“I married a… very bad man right out of high school. I wouldn’t listen to a word my parents or friends said about him. They saw something horrible in him, but I… I saw something wild, something exciting, in him. Looking back, now, I wonder how I missed the signs. I mean, they were so obvious.” Her voice thickened and cracked, broke, and she choked back her tears. “The decline was slow, but it was there. It was so clear.”

Syaoran started to reach for her, but she shuddered and he instantly snatched his hands back. His fisted them on his thighs and he felt the muscles quivering beneath his palms. 

“He was always jealous when I hung out with other people or talked to other men. At firsts, I thought it was adorable and sweet, but… it wasn’t…”

“I didn’t realize at first that he was cutting me off from my friends and family. I just wanted to spend all my time with him so when I made plans to be with someone else, he offered to stay in and watch movies and cuddle all night and I’d always blow them off. As time wore on, I stopped doing that and I’d try to spend time with Fai-san or Yuzuriha-chan. He always stopped me somehow.” Sakura hesitated and a tear ran down her cheek. “Once, he got me so drunk that I couldn’t even walk straight.”

“Whenever we went out in groups, with my friends or my parents or his friends, he always said stuff about me. Mean, derogatory, shameful, humiliating things. Not so much around my parents and my friends, but with his he was truly the worst. He talked about…” she dug her fingernails into the flesh of her cuticles, peeling the skin back, tearing it apart.

This time, Syaoran did cautiously lay his hand over hers and stop her from hurting herself any further. 

She wouldn’t look at him. Maybe she couldn’t… 

He knew the shameful feelings that came from abuse and torture, like it was all your fault that horrible things happened to you. He also knew what it was like to have someone talk about the things they did to him at night, making it seem like he was a worthless piece of meat.

He shuddered along with her.

“Then, he was always buying new,” her voice stuttered and broke, “always buying new… sex slaves…”

Syaoran bit his lip, hard, almost drawing blood from the healing split on his mouth. 

“I only found out what he did to them after it happened. He raped them so brutally, out in the woods behind our house where no one could hear them screaming. He had a little shack set up full of toys and chains and whips. He starved them to death regularly and beat them to death and bled them dry.” She let out a great hiccupping sob and pressed her face into her long fingered hands, but she continued through her tears. “I found out he buried all the bodies in my garden, said my love was what made my roses so beautiful, but it was really the rotting stinking bodies he buried there!”

Syaoran shivered. He knew how it was. He had buried other slaves himself, seen and felt firsthand the cruelty of masters who cared nothing for life.

“Then, he started in on me,” she whispered. “The first night he beat me, he was so drunk. I thought he’d never do it again, but… he did… he did and so many times… Afterwards, he always cried and broke down and told me he loved me and that he would never do it again. He said he would never hurt me again because he loved me so much.”

Her narrow shoulders shook with sobs and she appeared unable to go on. Syaoran gave her hand a little encouraging squeeze. She turned her palms up, clasped his hand, and held it tightly.

“Then, it got worse. He started blaming me, saying I made him beat me because I didn’t cook dinner right or I wasn’t waiting at the door when he came home. He started to destroy me. He told me I was worthless and that he was the best I would ever have. He told me all the time how generous he was being to settle for me, for some trash when he deserved better. He said I needed to be punished, beaten, for dragging him down. Like the fool, one of those battered women you hear about on the news, I believed everything he said.”

Syaoran shivered. He knew those feelings intimately. He had seen them on other slaves and felt them in himself.

“I stopped caring about my appearance and I just did everything he said without question. He started demanding sex from me, strange horrible forms of sex,” she shuddered at the memory and looked like she was going to throw up. “Blow jobs and he’d shove himself down my throat to choke me nearly unconscious, doggy style while he spanked me, hickies so black that he often drew blood from my skin, and sometimes he’d chain me to the bed and have me however he wanted. He stopped buying sex slaves.” 

She whispered, “He had me now. He didn’t need them anymore.”

“When he took me to his shack, I knew he was going to kill me and I didn’t care. I thought I deserved death,” she confessed. Then, she guided Syaoran’s hand to the brace on her leg, letting him feel the buckles as cold as ice. “He took a power drill to my leg, starting at the ankle. He shattered all the bones and tore apart the flesh. It never healed even with all the things the doctors did to it. I can’t use it anymore. All the nerves are gone.”

Syaoran shivered.

Then, Sakura looked up and her jade-green eyes met his amber orbs. Her face was wet with tears and her eyes were red from crying. “I’m telling you this because he still wants to hurt me. He’ll come here and if you want to go somewhere safe, I’ll understand.”

Then, she yanked her hands away from him, stood, and wobbled into her chair. 

Syaoran stared after her. He didn’t know what to say.

X X X

I was going to make his longer, but it’s hot and I don’t want to sit at the computer anymore. I also want to keep you all in suspense. What will Syaoran choose?! Mwahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Ahem.

Cough.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	9. The Wrong Question

I know it’s been a while with as fast as I’ve been updating, but it’s getting close to the end of the year and for some reason all the teachers like to pile on projects. I have a massive graduation project to do and a massive art final to design. 

And on top of all this, I have a monstrous head cold.

X X X

After a few heartbeats, Syaoran rose from the plush couch and scrubbed his fingers through his soft chocolate locks. Then, he tugged lightly on the strands. Sakura had actually given him a choice, a choice that involved his own life. He could stay with her and risk death or go somewhere safe and leave her to face death alone. 

Maybe it was because she had given him the choice that he made the decision he did… 

Quietly, he padded from the living room in search of Sakura. A quick peek in each of the rooms revealed that she was no longer in the house. Syaoran’s heart began to beat violently and erratically. Where could she have gone? Had that man come and taken her away to finished what he had started on her leg? Panicked, he rushed outside in search of her and nearly barreled into the back of her wheelchair on the porch.

She was sitting with her good leg drawn up against her chest and her arms wrapped around it. Her fingers were coated in blood, torn apart and he saw parts of her pinky fingernail were ripped out. Her shoulders were trembling minutely and her pale caramel-colored hair veiled her face from him. Her voice was thick with tears when she finally spoke. “Have you decided?” she asked him.

Syaoran put his hands on the back of her wheelchair and his fingertips brushed her shaking shoulders.

Immediately, her trembling stopped and she went stone still.

“I have,” he murmured.

She swallowed. “And…?”

Syaoran pulled her chair back a little, out of the onslaught of the blowing rain. “If… if you’ll have me, I’d like,” he hesitated, “to stay with you, Sakura-sama.”

Her back tensed up again and her voice became a hesitant little squeak. “Really?” she whispered.

He nodded, but she wasn’t facing him so he murmured, “Yes.”

She let out a shaky sigh of relief. “You’ll stay with me,” she whispered. “Thank you.” She reached behind her shoulder, found his hand, and laid her palm over it. “Thank you, Syaoran-kun. Thank you so much,” she sniffled, “for this.”

He felt a lump welling up in his throat and whispered, “Thank you for the choice.”

Sakura lifted her chin and craned her neck to look at him. “The choice?” she asked and their eyes met.

Syaoran lowered his eyes and whispered, “The choice to stay with you or keep my own life…”

“It’s your life,” Sakura whispered. “How could anyone try to control another person’s life? How could that choice be made by someone else?”

The wind howled through them, rattling in the eaves of the beautiful house and shaking the windows.

Syaoran didn’t say anything, but carefully pulled her chair backwards into the house. Safe from the onslaught of chilly wind, he hesitantly touched the short strands of caramel hair at the base of her neck, twisting them around his fingers. 

She made a small sound in her throat and tilted her head into his hands. “That feels so nice,” she said softly.

Syaoran hesitated and then whispered, “Is it alright… for me to… touch you like this…?”

Her jade-green eyes slid open and tried to catch his, but he studiously avoided her gaze. His amber orbs were locked on his fingers twining through her pale hair. 

He looked so fragile, like a small child stepping out on the limb of a tree branch hoping someone below would catch him. His barred amber eyes revealed how terribly aware he was of the crippling fall that stretched out below him like an abyss. His poor broken body, Sakura thought and traced the paths of the scars on his arms with her eyes.   
Finally, her silence drew his eyes from her hair to her face. Their eyes met and held.

Sakura wet her lips to speak, but couldn’t find her voice.

The color rushed from his face and he started to pull away. 

Sakura caught his hand and held it tightly. A little whimper crawled up his throat and he tried weakly to pull his hand from her grasp. 

“Please, Syaoran-kun,” she whispered. “It’s alright.”

Then, she gently pressed his hand to the warm side of her face. 

He shivered and she felt his fear run through her body.

He was afraid to trust her, afraid that this was all a trick. He was also afraid of what she had told him, afraid to lose the life he was just beginning to live. He was afraid to lose her, the only person who had ever seemed to care for him, the first person not to violate or beat or torture him on sight. 

He was afraid.

Sakura uncurled his fingers and cupped them around the curve of her jaw. She nuzzled against his palm and let her eyes slide closed.

“It’s alright, Syaoran-kun. It’s alright,” she murmured.

“Really…?”

She nodded and her mouth curved in a faint happy smile.

Gently, Syaoran stroked his thumb along the high ridge of her cheekbone, just enjoying the velvety texture of her skin. Her eyes were closed; she trusted him. His trust was fragile, tenuous at best, but he prayed that she wouldn’t destroy him.

Outside, it was pouring rain, but inside, Syaoran felt the first rays of sunshine warming his frozen heart. 

…

Night was a dark humid blanket just outside the windows. The stars stretched out endlessly like sparkling diamonds stitched into black velvet. The rain had finally stopped, but the soil was spongy and worms were flooded onto the stepping stones in Sakura’s garden. The air smelled fertile, like earth and wood and cut grass, like flowers could be grown in it.

Syaoran was standing at his bedroom window, dressed in fresh grey cotton pajama bottoms and a pale t-shirt with his clean wet hair slicked down against his forehead and cheeks. Nervously, Syaoran unlocked his window and pushed it up. Warm moist night air caressed his chilly skin. Sighing contently, he put his elbows on the window sill and leaned out. He inhaled the scent of the rainy night.

There were many times in his life that he had longed to do this, just look out on the night without feeling as if life was so bleak and dangerous out there in the dark. Moonlight kissed his skin, played over the planes of his face like cool silver and he allowed his amber eyes to slide closed in bliss and comfort. 

He felt safe here and that was a rare thing for a slave to feel.

His life had not been easy, but there would always be fond memories that he could look back on, even when he was a slave. There was another slave girl, his best friend, and he would always look back in time and miss her. Unlike him, she had remained a working slave while he had been sold off for his body. His only fond memories of a kind touch came from her and the hug she had given him the day he was the only things that had kept him going throughout his darkest days.

“Be safe, my friend,” she had said and then gently pressed her lips to the place below his ear. 

He remembered the sharp bones of her body against his hard frame and the softness of her skin, bare and bruised and grimy, and the scent of her rain-washed hair. Like him, she had never had a name and it was forbidden to give another slave even a nickname. 

Sighing, Syaoran rubbed his burning eyes and looked out into the night. He wondered how she was doing now.

He closed his eyes and inhaled the moist air deeply into his lungs. A night bird cried in the distance and he opened his eyes hoping to spot its silhouette. A star fell, streaking for a split-second across the dark velvet sky like a misplaced jewel. At that moment, he made a wish with all his heart.

_Please, let this last. Don’t take this away from me. Let this last, please…_

There was a faint knock on his door and he turned quickly. 

Sakura was standing in the threshold with her hand still poised from knocking. She was smiling beautifully and her jade-green eyes shone with light. Her caramel hair curled in wisps around her face though she had the front pulled back with a single butterfly clip. She was wearing pale pink pajamas bottoms with a pattern of cherry blossoms on them and a white tank top. He could see the dark rosy areolas of her nipples beneath the translucent fabric and that made him a little nervous, but she looked so gentle that he pushed his fears away.

She wet her lips before speaking. “Hey, Syaoran-kun,” she said almost timidly with a touch of nervousness in her smile. “It’s going to rain again tonight. You may want to close that.”

“Of course, Sakura-sama,” Syaoran said and nodded hurriedly.

She bit her lip and looked as if she wanted to say something, but Syaoran ventured a question before she could speak.

“But… is it alright if… maybe I close it later…?” he whispered.

Sakura smiled broadly. “Of course!”

Then, the nervousness touched her face again. “Syaoran-kun…?”

His amber eyes darkened fearfully and he drew his lip between his straight white teeth.

“I was wondering if you could… maybe, just… um… could you…? Could you…?”

His throat flashed as he swallowed. “Yes, Sakura-sama?”

“Would you be willing to… um, spend the night with me…?”

Syaoran looked as if he had been struck across the face. All the color drained from his face and he wet his bloodless lips. “O-of co-cour-rse, S-Sak-kura-sama,” he stuttered. His voice cracked and broke with what must have been terror.

Sakura’s heart clenched in a sharp painful fist of ice. Immediately, she gripped the doorframe and swayed unsteadily on her feet. Her injured crippled leg tried to buckle beneath her, but the brace snapped it straight. 

“No, no, Syaoran-kun,” Sakura tried to explain. Her breath rushed out of her lungs in panic, making it nearly impossible to sputter out what she was trying to say. She heaved in a deep breath and managed to calm her racing heart.

Syaoran was curling in his shoulders, shrinking and collapsing in on himself. He looked very small and fragile and she had broken him.

“No, Syaoran-kun, please, wait. Let me explain,” she whispered.

He didn’t raise his eyes to meet her gaze, but a tremulous shiver ran through his entire frame.

Sakura limped the expanse of his bedroom. Every step forward she took toward him, he took one backwards. Finally, he was backed up against the window, whimpered faintly, and squeezed his eyes tightly shut. 

“Please, Syaoran-kun, listen to me. Please, let me explain.” Tears welled up on Sakura’s lashes and she hurriedly brushed them away with the back of her hand. “It’s… I can’t sleep at night,” she whispered. “I’m so afraid that Raitei will come in and finished what he started on my body.”

Syaoran’s face eased, but he didn’t open his eyes. He stopped biting on his lip and there was a speck of blood on his split flesh.

“Please, Syaoran-kun… I just want someone to be with me,” Sakura sobbed. “Please, I didn’t mean… what you thought I meant… please, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Syaoran opened his eyes and took in the shattered heartbroken look on her beautiful face. He wet his lips and whispered, “It’s alright, Sakura-sama.”

She fisted her hands in the front of her shirt and stared down at her toes. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “You must think I’m a horrible person.”

He shook his head. “No, Sakura-sama, I think you’re a,” he swallowed, “a very good person.”

Sakura sniffled and looked up into his nervous broken face. The moonlight fell across his cheeks and shone on his eyes, making his amber orbs glow in the dark. He looked beautiful, like some kind of strange paradoxical god. He was strong and handsome and rippling with power yet he radiated fear and abuse and years of torment.

“And… I’d be,” he swallowed, “willing to spend… the night with you…”

Sakura shook her head. “No, never mind. It’s alright,” she said. Then, as fast as her crippled leg could carry her, she ran from him.

He heard her door slam down the hall.

Then, everything was silent.

Outside, it began to rain.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	10. The Gift

Alright, my Graduation project is finished and I present it tomorrow at 11:30! Woot! Yippee for me! I have the rest of the day free from school and get to loaf about Northampton doing… well, I don’t know, but not school. 

It’s supposed to rain all day though and that really sucks. Grr!

X X X

The day dawned clear and promisingly sunny. A few wisps of cotton-candy clouds hung in the sky. The air smelled sooty and fresh, sweet with flower perfume and grass and clean water. Birds were having a field day snatching up all the soggy worms.

Syaoran and Sakura, on the other hand, were less than happy to see the awkward morning light peeking through the windows.

Sakura’s jade-green eyes had dark bruise-like circles under them and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot to the point where they were almost completely red. Her hair was brushed smooth, but limp and lackluster. The clothing she chose to wear–plain blue jeans and a loose-fitting white t-shirt–hung off of her skinny skeleton frame. She had her brace on the outside of her jeans, buckled tightly. The overall effect was like something from a horror picture. She looked like a ghost.

Syaoran was used to not sleeping. His amber eyes were faintly red-rimmed, but that was all. His hair was mussed and the split in his lip looked swollen and angry as if he had been gnawing it with worry. The bruises and scars and wounds on the rest of his body made him look like a young man who had been through hell, but had at least been able to sleep a few hours. 

Sakura had not elected to use her wheelchair this morning. Her crippled leg scrape-scratch-dragged behind her as she moved around the kitchen. She appeared distracted, troubled, and her face was dark with sleeplessness. Their altercation the night before must have kept her from sleeping and Syaoran had not heard her crying out in her dreams.  
The sound troubled Syaoran, but he didn’t really know why. He thought of the drill going into her flesh and shivered. The same thing had nearly been done to him… to his eyes… He shuddered at the memory, teeth almost rattling together.

“Sakura-sama,” Syaoran ventured nervously. There was a quiver of fear in his voice, but he tried to squash it down.

“I’m so sorry, Syaoran-kun. I’m so sorry,” she whispered. A plate slipped from her fingers and shattered on the floor.

Syaoran leaped in his skin, heart hammering against his ribcage like a trapped animal trying to escape.

Sakura’s leg slid across the tile and she hooked her fingers through the top of her brace to drag it beneath her again. Then, she leaned heavily on the counter. She sniffled and her shoulders heaved shakily. She was crying.

She was crying because of him.

Syaoran’s blood turned to ice in his veins. 

This was it. This was the end of his dream of a safe place.

He made her cry, denied her himself, denied her his body. Now…

She would kill him!

…

It was so quiet.

It was too quiet.

The silence stretched on endlessly.

Sakura shivered and tried to silence the sobs that crept up her throat. 

The only things she could hear were the sound of her heart beating, slamming against her ribs, and the rattle-tap of her brace on the tile floor as her leg trembling from weakness.  
Pieces of crockery lay spread on the floor like pieces of a broken soul, spread out, too sharp to put back together and too small to matter. The sound of the plate breaking had been so horribly loud, like her heart breaking inside her chest. 

Now, the quiet was haunting.

Syaoran was stone-still. His striking face was chalk-white and his amber eyes were terrified.

The quiet stretched on.

Sakura was unable to find her voice and Syaoran was to frozen in terror to speak.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Silence.

Then, there was a knock at the door.

…

The sound was so abrupt and sudden and unexpected that Sakura’s heart leaped into her throat and she heard Syaoran inhale so sharply she thought he had bit his tongue. The gasp he produced sounded like one of pain and fear. Swallowing the misplaced organ, Sakura limped from the kitchen and went to the door.

She pulled it open and her leg spiked with pain from ankle to hip. 

Whimpering, Sakura directed her attention from her crippled leg to the white rectangle of light that was her door. It was sunny and blessedly summery looking outside. The birds were chirping and the sky was bright crystal-clear cloudless blue.

Her porch was deserted save a cheerful little robin with a bright red chest and a small nondescript cardboard box with a white letter folded beneath the string. Curious, Sakura bent to retrieve the package. It was fairly light and seemed rather empty.

She returned to the kitchen, walked past Syaoran without looking at him, set the box on the counter, and got out a knife to slit the string and paper. But first, she freed the letter and opened it. It bore a simple plain message— _a gift for Sakura-chan_ —and no name of the sender. 

A knot of dread formed in Sakura’s stomach. Something was very wrong with this package.

Biting her lip, she raised the knife and slit the paper and string. Then, she pulled it away.

The box looked rather plain and nonthreatening. It was neatly taped closed. 

Sakura split the tape and then timidly peeled open the flaps of cardboard. 

Immediately, she clapped her hands over her mouth with a stifled howl of anguish and whirled away from the open box. She tripped over her own legs and smashed headlong into Syaoran. He crashed backwards, shocked, and was unable to catch himself. They both slammed into the floor with Syaoran’s body taking the brunt of the fall.

He grunted and gripped her shoulders. She fisted her fingers in the front of his shirt and her nails dug into his flesh. She was whimpering and sobbing, gripping him tightly as though he was her last lifeline.

“Sakura-sama? What is it?” Syaoran croaked.

“The box,” she whispered. “Look…!” 

There was such profound terror in her voice that he had to see what had frightened her so much. He gently lifted her from him and helped her sit back on her good leg. She continued sobbing into her long fingered hands while Syaoran went to the counter and peered nervously into the box.

It was lined with a white plastic bag and written in red on the inside of the cardboard flaps were the words _Love Raitei._

Nestled in the plastic was a small animal, butchered. Its skin was ripped and torn apart and filleted back from the bones. Beneath the mutilated skin was muscle slashed and peeled apart in layers. Its face was nothing but jaw bones and teeth and a slavering tongue that quivered weakly. 

That’s when Syaoran realized…

It was still alive!

Sickened, he turned his face away for a moment, biting hard on his lip. It wouldn’t live long and this had only been done to it a short time ago, but until it died, it would know suffering that no one should ever be forced to know. 

Syaoran had suffered as well and he couldn’t bear to see this creature suffer, too. 

Then, he reached into the box and gripped the slimy bloody creature’s body with both hands. It whimpered and quivered and trembled in his hands. Again, he turned his face away and gripped the thing tighter. Smoothly and without thinking about what he was going to do, he broke its neck. 

The animal gave one last death quiver and then died almost instantly.

Syaoran turned to Sakura. She had stopped weeping and was staring directly at Syaoran’s saddened open face. 

“It’s him,” she whispered. “He’s begun.”

And then, she held out her arms for the bloody creature in his hands.

He did not give it to her.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	11. For Him

I am now an insomniac. I haven’t slept in about a week. It really sucks.

X X X

Sakura had scraped herself from the kitchen floor and put in a call to Kurogane. After she hung up with him, she just broke down and fell apart. Syaoran could hear her crying all the way outside. He was in her garden with the bloodied creature and a shovel, digging a small shallow grave. 

Kurogane would need to see the thing, but then it could be buried. 

It was owed at least that.

Syaoran pushed the spade deep into the soft moist earth and then leaned on the shovel. His heart was thundering behind his ribs and showed no intention of ever slowing.

He was afraid, not for himself or even his life, but for Sakura. She had looked terrible sitting on the floor, pale and tearstained, reaching out for the creature he had just killed in his hands. He was afraid to lose the young woman he had no right to care for or desire.

This man, this Raitei, would destroy her. He would tear apart her gentle beautiful heart before completing whatever torment and mutilation he had planned.

And, as he was, weak and beaten, Syaoran could do nothing to protect her.

He plowed up another shovelful of soil and peered into the hole he had made. It was deep enough now, settled here in the roots of a beautiful crimson-red rose bush. He thrust the spade deeply into the soil to mark the grave and then turned to go back into the house. 

Careful not to tread mud on the clean tile, he toed off his shoes and then slipped through the sliding glass door. 

Sakura was sitting at the kitchen table with the phone in front of her. Her jade-green eyes were glazed with tears and swollen and red-rimmed from crying. Her caramel hair was plastered to her wet cheeks and the fear-sweat on the back of her neck. She was shivering, teeth-chattering, brace rattling on the floor from the tremors in her body.

Nervously, Syaoran skirted around her for a moment. Then, he poured a tumbler of water and set it in front of her. He went to the bathroom, got a box of tissues, and returned to the kitchen to set them in front of her. He shifted nervously from foot to foot because she appeared not to even notice that he had placed this array of items before her. He went to the living room, got a blanket, returned to the kitchen, and draped it around her shoulders.

She jolted, practically leaping from her skin in fright.

Syaoran shrank back, quiet, waiting for her response.

She shuddered and then fisted the ends of the blanket in her fingers. She pulled it tightly around herself and murmured, “Syaoran-kun?”

There was a knock at the door.

Sakura whimpered, but it opened only to reveal Kurogane’s worried face and dark silhouette. He walked quickly to the kitchen with such vehement purpose that Syaoran skittered nervously back a few paces. Kurogane pulled back the chair next to Sakura, hooked his boot around the leg of Sakura’s chair, jerked her seat to face him, and snapped a wad of tissues from the box.

“Sakura-chan,” Kurogane said quietly, but fiercely. He mopped the tears none to gently from her face and pushed her wet hair back from her cheeks, tucking the strands behind her ears.

She whimpered and shivered while he did this, fighting him weakly as if she did not recognize who he was.

Finally, Kurogane sighed and pushed back from her. 

“Alright, kid,” he said to Syaoran. “Show me what he sent her.”

Syaoran nodded, led Kurogane through the back door, slipped his feet into his shoes again, and showed Kurogane the mutilated little creature in the box next to the little grave. Kurogane scooped it up and surveyed the creature. Its head lolled on the broken neck.

“Was it dead when you got it?” Kurogane asked.

Syaoran looked at his feet, shuffling nervously.

“Kid?”

His head snapped up and instantly met Kurogane’s piercing crimson eyes. Syaoran saw that the man meant no harm and would not strike him for speaking as another might when addressed by a slave.

“No,” Syaoran murmured nervously. 

“It was alive?” Kurogane purposefully watched the head lolling about.

Syaoran nodded and whispered, “It was suffering. I,” he hesitated, “I broke its neck…”

Kurogane made a sound low in his throat and then said quietly, “Good job, kid. Good job.”

Syaoran shivered.

Kurogane laid the body in the small grave and shoveled the dirt over it. Then, he knelt and patted it down with his hands. “So, I take it she told you…?”

Syaoran whispered, “Yes, sir. Sakura-sama even gave me a choice.”

“What did you decide?”

Syaoran bit his lip. “To stay,” he murmured.

“Good,” Kurogane said. “I don’t know how we’re going to handle this. Raitei is like smoke and trying to catch him is like trying to grab smoke with your bare hands.” He shook his head. “The only thing we can do is wait for him to make his next move.”

Then, Kurogane looked right into Syaoran’s amber eyes and locked the orbs in a piercing gaze. “Do you know how to handle a weapon?”

Syaoran nodded nervously. “Yes, I was a fight slave before,” his shame burned in his throat, “before sex.”

Kurogane grunted, unaffected by learning Syaoran was the worst kind of slave. “Alright. What’s your preference?”

He hesitated and then said, “Sword.”

Kurogane nodded and stood up from the little grave. “I’ll have one to you by the end of the day.” Then, he picked up the shovel and started back for the house.

Syaoran heard a crackle of breaking twigs in the woods behind him, whirled to look, saw nothing, and hurried after Kurogane.

…

True to his word, before the end of the day, Kurogane returned to the house with a beautifully crafted sword. It was freshly sharpened and perfectly balanced, a beautiful piece of metal. Under Kurogane’s watchful eye, Syaoran drew it and gave it a few test swings. They sparred for a moment as Kurogane was armed with his own blade. 

“Alright,” Kurogane said. “You can hold your own. Be careful and protect the girl.”

“Yes sir,” Syaoran said and slipped the sword back into its sheath.

Kurogane burned his crimson eyes into the scrawny young man with the battered face. “Know that if she dies, you’re going back to where you came from,” he snapped.

The light left Syaoran’s hopeful happy eyes and Kurogane instantly regretted saying it, but what was done was done. He felt like a real dick, like an asshole.

Syaoran lowered his eyes to the floor and whispered, “I understand.”

Grunting, Kurogane left.

…

Syaoran returned to the kitchen where Sakura was still sitting, staring blankly ahead of her at the wall. He gently touched her shoulder and gave her a timid shake.

She whimpered.

“Sakura-sama?” he whispered.

She slowly lifted her jade eyes to meet his. Her eyes were dry and red-rimmed with dark circles beneath them. “Syaoran-kun…” she whispered and shifted in her seat as if to reach for him. After a moment, she lowered her arms and stared woefully at her clasped hands in her lap.

He swallowed and then sat quietly in the chair beside her. “I… I buried it,” he whispered.

She shuddered, but whispered, “I’m glad.” 

He saw her hands clench and she dug her fingernails into the flesh around her nails, tearing the skin apart and off. 

He hesitated, then laid his palm over her bleeding hands. “Stop, please,” he whispered. “You’re hurting yourself.”

She shuddered. “Does it matter?”

Syaoran bit his lips, but was unable to speak.

Sakura began to sob. “I’m going to die anyway. Maybe I should just kill myself now so he can’t play with me like I’m some kind of mouse!”

His heart clenched in his chest with anguish and fear. Kurogane’s words pounded through his head and heart. If she dies, you’re going back to where you came from! “No,” Syaoran whispered and his fingers tightened around Sakura’s hand.

She looked up into his face, eyes glossy and sparkly with tears. “What?” she whispered.

His eyes met hers and drilled into her heart. She felt out of breath. His fear and agony was tangible, palpable. His grip was so tight on her injured hand, she almost pulled away. Something stayed her.

“Please, Sakura-sama,” Syaoran whispered. “Please, no, please.”

Her voice broke with tears. “Why?”

Syaoran tore his eyes from hers and she saw a flash of falling crystal water from his face. “Please, if you die… if you die… I’ll be sent back…”

“Sent back?” she whispered.

His chest jerked with nervous breath and his throat worked furiously. “Back to the place I came from,” he whispered. “Back to a… bed… Back to… sex…”

Sakura’s chest tightened. She hadn’t thought of that, thought of him.

If she died, Syaoran–the tortured beautiful broken nameless molested beaten abused terrified sex slave–would return to claim his haunted heart. She thought of the way he had been: staring at the floor, shivering, unable to speak, wincing and flinching from the faintest touch, without a name… 

She couldn’t do that to him.

She couldn’t force him to become that again.

Sakura gripped his hands in her own and all her own fear melted away.

She had to live, had to survive, to protect this beautiful tormented young man.

Syaoran raised his eyes to hers. They were glowing, red-rimmed with painful tears. He was biting his lip hard enough to draw blood. 

Sakura smiled and reached to wipe the blood from his mouth with her thumb.

He flinched, whispering, “Please…”

Sakura nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her so she whispered, “Yes, Syaoran-kun.”

His eyes eased open and hope lit the back of them.

He was so trusting, so hopeful, so hurt and tormented, but so trusting. He trusted her.

She wet her lips. “Yes, for you,” she murmured. “For you…”

Syaoran allowed his eyes to slide closed again in bliss. Tears leaked below his lids, catching on his long lashes.

“For you…” she said again.

“Thank you,” he whispered with true heartbreaking gratitude.

Sakura rested her forehead against his. For a moment, he tensed and trembled, but finally relaxed against her. She heard him inhale deeply, surely smelling the scent of her. His fingertips, cool and soft, touched her knees lightly, hesitantly. She didn’t move, allowing him to touch her. Finally, he laid his palms over her hard bony knees and let out his breath.

He smelled good, like soil and wood and sunlight and something that was completely him.

Caught up in their moment, neither of them saw the thing in the window and they wouldn’t discover it until later that night…

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	12. The Question

I know. I know. It’s been sooooooooooooo long, but school is almost out and I’ve been so busy! I’m watching Sahara and feel kind of queasy. I think I’m getting sick.

X X X

Syaoran felt an impending sense of déjà vu. 

He was once again standing at his open bedroom window, looking out on the balmy star-speckled night. The breeze toyed through him, over him, tugging at his hair and pajamas. It was a warm night, untouched by the threat or promise of rain. He smelled soil and flowers and imagined he could smell the little creature decomposing where he had buried it beneath Sakura’s rosebush, but that was only his tormented imagination. 

He was freshly showered, cool and clean, with his damp chocolate hair slicked against his sallow cheeks. His belly was nicely full and he was pleasantly tired from the day’s events and stresses yet he felt troubled and uneasy. He wore grey cotton pajama bottoms, a pale t-shirt, and his bare feet peeked out beneath the long hems. 

A night bird cried in the distance and an owl hooted.

There was a quiet knock at his door and he turned to face Sakura, lingering nervously in the threshold. Unlike that night he recalled, when she had asked him that wrong question, she was wearing a light rose-colored nightgown. It ended just above her knees, bearing her naked legs. Her brace was tight on her crippled leg and the scars gleamed like white-hot burns.

“H-hi, Syaoran-kun,” Sakura murmured with a touch of nervousness. 

Syaoran wet his lips and tried to offer her a faint timid smile. “Hello, Sakura-sama,” he said quietly and had to drag his eyes from the floor to meet hers. He could barely look into the illuminated curve of her beautiful face. She looked terrified and exhausted by such potent fear. Her skin was waxy and wan, like his own sallow cheeks. 

Fear was an effective survival mechanism, but in the vast quantities slaves and apparently Sakura experienced, it was a potent and debilitating emotion. Fear clouded the mind, choked the lungs, made it hard to think, and crippled the powers of a courageous mind. 

“You are afraid,” Syaoran whispered without thinking.

Sakura shivered and gripped the doorframe hard in her white-knuckled fingers. Then, faintly, she whimpered, “Yes… I am…”

Syaoran jolted, also suddenly afraid of her reaction to such a bold statement. “I’m sorry, Sakura-sama,” he mumbled. “I had no right to say that.”

She bit her lip. “No, it’s alright, Syaoran-kun. It’s true,” she murmured. 

For a moment, they stood in awkward silence. 

Then, Sakura hesitantly whispered, “Yesterday, I… asked you to spend the night with me and… everything went wrong…” She paused, as if struggling internally with herself. Then, she appeared to come to a decision. “I know how Raitei is… He’ll strike again, maybe not tonight, but soon. He wants to keep me afraid, fearing for my life,” she hesitated again, “and for yours.”

Syaoran felt a pleasant shiver run down his spine to pool warmly in his stomach. She cared for his life and that was the most beautiful feeling to have bestowed upon him, maybe not love, but a caring that he had never experienced. 

Sakura examined her fingers, bloodied and swollen and red against the white paint of the doorframe. Then, she shoved her fists against her sides as if searching for a pocket to hide them away in. “Syaoran-kun, I know that last time…”

He tasted the words in her mouth, bitter and hesitant and frightened. 

“…everything went all wrong, but…” Sakura lifted her jade-green eyes to his and whispered, “Let’s spend the night together. We’ll be safer that way.”

Syaoran wet his lips nervously, looked at her shiny white-scarred leg, at his bed, then at his bare feet, and finally back to her. She looked pale and fearful, tears were gathering on her lashes, tears of rejection. Finally, he nodded timidly.

“Of course, Sakura-sama.”

Yet when he followed her from his room, closing the door quietly behind himself, he felt a flutter of pure terror tightening in his groin and heart. As good as she had been to him, he still feared her and feared what lay ahead just on the other side of her door. 

Sakura’s bedroom was nothing like he had expected. He had seen it once before when she had been crying out in her sleep and he sneaked in to check on her, to make sure she wasn’t in any danger. Then his veil of terror to find her awake and catch him in her room had clouded his perceptions of it. Now, still touched by a mist of fear, he could look at the room as it really was. 

The walls were painted pale blue, like a summer sky, and the windows were framed by sheer white curtains, like clouds. The ceiling was plain white with a slowly revolving whicker fan. There were two closed doors–one presumably led to a closet and the other to a bathroom, like in his room. The bed had simple but elegant carvings on the headboard and footboard and the posters were topped by highly-polished cherry hearts. The covers were smooth dark blue cotton, stuffed and quilted with down. The sheets were pale grey and silky and the bed was heaped with pillows. An extra knitted afghan in pure white was folded neatly at the foot of the bed. The dressers and nightstand were made of highly-polished reddish cherry and carved in the same simple fashion as the bed frame. There was a pretty glass lamp with a fringed shade and a paperback novel basking in the amber light. Sakura’s wheelchair was positioned at her bedside.

Other than those objects, the room was bare of clutter and photographs alike.

Syaoran wet his lips. 

Sakura sat on the edge of her bed and slowly, not without some difficulty, began to take her brace off. 

“Sakura-sama,” Syaoran whispered. “Can I help you, please?”

She smiled and pulled on buckle loose. “Thank you, Syaoran-kun, that would be lovely.”

His hands started shaking even before he touched her. Gently, tenderly, timidly, Syaoran wrapped his fingers behind the joint of her knee and lifted her foot onto his thigh. Her skin was warm and soft, like heaven, but her joints resisted the slightest movement, stiff and unmanageable, damaged beyond repair. Syaoran shivered. His knuckles brushed over the lumpy knobs of scar tissue as he worked down her leg, unfastening each buckle on the cold brace. Finally, her leg slipped free and was warm and bare in his hands.

The scent of her skin tickles his nose and bathed the inside of his mouth. He found nervous anticipatory warmth pooling in his stomach. He would be permitted to sleep in that scent tonight, untouched, un-accosted, just sleep beside her. Maybe, once she was deeply asleep, he would be able to lightly touch her arm and feel her soft warm skin.

Syaoran wet his lips and then looked up from the curve of Sakura’s knee to the illuminated peony of her face. She was gazing down at him, looking both sad and happy and nervous and troubled. He lowered his hands from her, quickly picked up her brace, set it in her chair, and took several steps away from her. He slammed his eyes into the floorboards, cursing himself for getting so wrapped up in trusting her and touching her. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!

“Syaoran-kun?”

His head snapped up and their eyes met. 

Sakura had her hands tucked beneath the stiff bend of her knee, lifting her leg onto the bed beside her. It stretched out lamely on top of the quilted covers and she ran her hand down the expanse of smooth bare skin. The cloth of her rose-colored nightgown lay across her thighs and hung off her shoulders. Her full breasts swelled with each breath and her pulse was beating in her temples and throat. She timidly patted the side of the bed she did not occupy.

“I promise…” she whispered.

Syaoran had to clench his hands to stop them from trembling as he made the few steps around her bed to the side she wished him to lay on. She pulled back the covers for him since the night was cool. Syaoran perched on the edge of the bed and the mattress yielded soft and blissful beneath his tense muscles. That alone coaxed a faint wave of calm through his coiled body. Biting his lip, he rolled his shoulders and then gently touched the cool sleek cloth of the sheets. They were clean, crisp, fresh.

“I promise, Syaoran-kun…”

Sakura’s warm fingers ghosted across the back of his shoulders, eliciting a shiver from his tight muscles. She immediately drew her hands back and did not touch him again. He heard her shuffling behind him, shoving her useless leg beneath he sheets, getting comfortable, and finally flicking off the lamp. 

Stiff and nervous, Syaoran lay down like a board beside her, half under and half on top of the covers.

Then, she whispered, “I promise not to hurt you, Syaoran-kun. I promise…”

But, that night, she touched him.

And something else tapped at the window.

X X X

I was so slow I just wanted to get this up!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	13. Witching Hours

Three days of school left!!!!

X X X

Sakura woke up sometime during the witching hours between midnight and four in the morning. She had no clock in her bedroom, hating to watch the hours tick away when she couldn’t sleep at night or to know how many times she woke from nightmares. 

Something was touching her leg, twisting around the inside of her thigh. For a moment, she thought she was once against lying beside Raitei for he often woke her in the night for sex by trailing his hot tongue across the smooth taut intimate skin. 

Then, she felt the dull ache in her crippled drilled leg and knew this could not be the case.

Her first thought was of Syaoran, though it was highly unlikely that he was touching her at all. She turned and the touch followed her, moving steadily up her leg.

The moonlight was spilling across her bed, illuminating the pale porcelain curve of Syaoran’s sleeping face. His chocolate hair hung in feathers across his face, shadowing his translucent skin. His brows were drawn together and he appeared troubled. There was blood on his mouth where he was biting his lip and his fingers had fisted a white-knuckled grip on the covers. His eyes roved beneath his lids.

Sakura gently reached for him and wiped the blood on his lip away with her thumb.

He shivered, whimpered, and murmured, “Sakura-sama…”

She decided she must be dreaming.

Syaoran was a slave, a sex slave. He was probably lying beside her, rigid as a board, staring blankly at the ceiling and thinking of all the terrible violations she could subject him to on her slightest whim. The chances of him sleeping beside her, even plagued with nightmares, were slim to none. 

She lay back against her pillows and tried to ignore the trailing tongue on her leg. Even if she was having nightmares, she needed to sleep. She had to be well-rested and have her wits about her for tomorrow. Her life, and Syaoran’s life, she reminded herself, depended on it.

So, she lay in her bed and tried to ignore the touch on her leg as it crept up the inside of her thigh.

She had had this dream before. She would yank back the covers and there would be Raitei’s handsome face leering up at her. His tongue, long and black and bumpy with the film of nightmare-reality, would be lolling from his mouth across her thigh and his cold fingers would be digging into her flesh, holding her down. She would scream and immediately wake herself up. Then, she would lie, panting and gasping, in her sweaty sheets until nightmares came for her again.

Maybe she could just get through this one and sleep all through the night.

Sakura sighed deeply and fisted her hands in the sheets.

Syaoran shifted beside her. His warm bony back grazed her elbow and he whimpered in pain. Then, he twisted away from her so they were no longer touching.

The slimy warm tongue was creeping up the inside of Sakura’s thigh, lavishing attention on the top of her knee and then trailing up the taut flesh. It slithered around the inside and pressed in at the apex of her leg. The cool fabric of her nightgown was being pushed up over her belly and she felt her flesh break of in goose bumps. Then, the tongue bumped at her core, just a faint light almost inquisitive brush against her panties.

She drew her lip between her teeth and bit down hard to prevent herself from tearing back the covers to see Raitei’s leering face, prevent waking up. She needed to sleep, needed to protect herself and Syaoran.

Then, the tongue pushed aside her panties and nudged inquisitively at her heated core. Then, it slipped around the hem of her panties and licked at her clit. Heat pooled unwillingly in Sakura’s belly, twisting there like a worm.

Sakura choked back her whimper and squeezed her eyes shut. “Just a dream,” she whispered. “Just sleep.”

Suddenly, it pushed into her, hard, probing, filling, pressing against her tight walls, tearing her apart. Sakura’s back arched against the mattress in pain and she let out a small whisper of agony. It crammed deeper inside of her intimate womanhood, squirming and wriggling. It felt so big, so huge, and slick and smooth. It was nothing like Raitei’s tongue in her nightmares.

Her eyes shot open.

Something was wrong!

She wrenched up in bed and tore back the covers. Her legs were spread, crippled one hanging over the edge as it often did at night while the other was stretched out straight and twisted slightly in the sheets. Her nightgown had been pushed up over her belly, baring her panties which were twisted to the side. 

Then, she saw it.

It was a fat greenish tentacle-like appendage squirming about between her thigh and the crotch of her panties. The thought of that being inside her made her sick and her stomach heaved. Immediately, she dug her ragged nails into the part of it that was peeking out of her snatch and jerked it out. She glanced quickly at it to be sure it had no teeth, grinning mouth, eyes, or other disgusting attributes and then flung it across the room.

It hit the broken window with a muted splat and then tinkled through the shattered glass.

It had broken a window. It had broken a window to get into her room and violate her.

Suddenly, she thought of the expression of Syaoran’s face and wondered it of one them was inside him too, making his nightmares real. She grabbed his shoulder and shook him almost roughly. He came awake immediately, bolting upright in the bed with his hands tightening around the blankets.

“Sakura-sama?” he whispered and there was fear in his voice.

“Were you dreaming?”

He shook his head, amber eyes wide and fearful.

“Were you?!”

“N-no, Sakura-sama.”

The tentacle was slowly making its way back across the floor, slithering and inching with grim purpose. Sakura opened her nightstand drawer and pulled out a letter opener. Syaoran’s eyes widened even further and his face went chalk-white. Sakura gripped the opener tightly in her fist and lifted it, jade eyes narrowing.

Syaoran’s ice-cold hands wrapped around her wrist and he whimpered, “Promised…”

Sakura tore her eyes from the thing to look at him. “What?”

“You promised… not to hurt… me…” His amber eyes glowed with terror and strayed to the sharp point of the letter opener. Then, they flicked worriedly back to her face. “Please,” he whispered. “Don’t… cut me. I haven’t… done anything wrong. Please, have mercy.”

Immediately, Sakura understood. He thought this weapon was for his flesh. Maybe he thought his dreams had woken her or she thought he was lying to her. Both of those were easily punishable by whip and knife and pain. Hell, he was a slave; she could beat him for breathing if she felt so inclined.

But Sakura’s heart leaped a little regardless of the dire situation and grievous misunderstanding between her and Syaoran. He trusted her promise, brought it up again even in his fear. He trusted her, if only a fragile tremulous little bit.

“No, no, Syaoran-kun. It’s that thing,” and she pointed.

His amber eyes nervously flit from the letter opener to her face. He must have seen something in her expression, honesty maybe, because he cut his gaze to the floor and inhaled sharply. “A sex-slither,” he whispered.

“You know what that is?” Sakura whispered incredulously.

Syaoran nodded. “Should I stop it?”

Sakura nodded and handed him the letter opener. 

He got out of bed, crossed the floor to the tentacle, put his foot on it, and then slit its back open with the sharp point. The slick skin split to reveal intricate gears and controls. Syaoran selected one wire and pulled it free. Immediately, the thing sputtered and went still. Syaoran went to the window, mindful of the glass in his bare feet, and looked out.

“Whoever was running it is gone now,” he murmured.

Sakura shivered. To think Raitei or one of his sick friends had been outside her window, watching that thing slither inside her made her sick. She wrenched herself from the bed and into her wheelchair and rolled quickly to the bathroom.

Syaoran could surely hear her retching, but she didn’t care.

There was a hesitant knock on the bathroom doorframe and she turned her head to see Syaoran’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I’m sorry, Sakura-sama,” he whispered.

She wiped her mouth and splashed some cool water on her face and neck. Her eyes were red-rimmed and hunted in the mirror and her hair was pasted to her cheeks and neck with sweat. “For what, Syaoran-kun?” she asked.

“For… I thought, back there, that you were going to hurt me…” His eyes were closed, long lashes casting dark bruise-like shadows on his face. His shoulders were trembling and he had his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I’m so sorry…”

Sakura let her breath out. “No, I’m sorry. I panicked. I was just… worried. That thing in me… I thought it was part of my nightmares and you looked troubled in your sleep, I thought maybe one was on you, too. I wanted to help you, but I just wigged out and reacted badly,” she explained and rolled herself toward Syaoran. 

He took a few steps back to allow her out of the bathroom. “You were… concerned?”

She slid her eyes around the room. The sex-slither as Syaoran had called it was gone and the big pieces of glass her glimmering in her waste basket. Syaoran’s handiwork, she was sure. “Yes,” Sakura said as she hefted herself back into bed. “I’m a bit of a mother hen or at least that’s what Yuzuriha-chan says.”

Syaoran lifted his amber orbs to her face and started at her for a very long moment. Then, he whispered, “For me…?”

Sakura’s brows drew together. “Concerned for you?”

He flinched, expecting a cold brutal “No, of course not. Who would ever care about a used sex slave like you?” but instead Sakura’s mouth curved down in a troubled frown.

“Of course,” she said. “Syaoran-kun, you’re my friend.”

His head jerked up with surprise and their eyes locked. 

Sakura smiled at him sadly. “No one’s ever been concerned for you before, have they?” she whispered.

Syaoran shook his head, lowering his eyes again. “My last mistress was always concerned for my body, for my… performance, but…”

“Never for you?” Sakura murmured.

He nodded and his throat was working furiously.

“Syaoran-kun?”

There was something in her voice that made him look up to find her holing out her hand. Timidly, he slid his cool fingers across her warm palm. She gripped his hand and he found himself holding on equally tightly. She patted the bed and he sat down beside her. They didn’t say anything, just sat shoulder to shoulder, holding hands tightly.

Eventually, Sakura’s breathing became deep and even and she grew very heavy against Syaoran’s side. He peered down into her face and found her deeply asleep against him. He carefully wrapped his arm around her and lowered her back against the pillows. He pulled the covers up over her with his free hand and then nestled down beside her. He managed to keep some space between their bodies and tried vainly to free his fingers from her grip. She murmured and gripped his hand tighter. He sighed and pulled the blankets up tightly beneath his chin and gazed at her beautiful face for a moment. Finally, his exhausted dry eyes slid closed.

For the very first time, Syaoran slept with a gentle warm touch on his body and he slept without nightmares.

The wind howled through the broken window and a chilly breeze stirred the curtains. A night bird cried in the distance and something rattled through the woods outside. That night, they slept with the light on.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	14. The Torture Warlock

School is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Whoo-hoo!!!!!!!!!! No more homework, no more books, no teacher’s dirty looks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway…

X X X

The sky was black and boiling with rage. Rain was slanting in through the broken window, sheets of ice-cold water slashed at the sides of the house and knocked all the petals from Sakura’s blooming blood-red rosebush, and rushed through the gutters. The wind was howling through the eaves of the house and bearing soggy leaves and rose petals through the rain. The trees were thrashing and bowing in the gusts and several branches were already down. Thunder crashed and lightning flared. The power shuddered.

Syaoran woke to the sound of rustling clothing. 

His heart hammered against his ribs a few times before slowing and he warily cracked open one amber eye. The sheets beside him where Sakura had been gripping his hand last night were empty, but warm. He opened his other eye and immediately spotted Sakura’s naked gleaming back, intersected only by her bra strap. Her spine was sinuous and curved, her ribs sculpted like long fingers around her chest, and he could glimpse the swell of her breasts. A few white scars speckled her skin, but the marks were barely visible on her porcelain-alabaster skin. She was wearing a pair of jeans with her brace buckled over them and pulling on a white t-shirt. Her caramel hair was tousled and glossy.

She looked so beautiful.

Syaoran’s mouth went dry and he had to avert his eyes from the lighted curve of her lithe spine as she slithered the cloth down over her head. Then, he heard her brace scrape-thumping on the floor as she made her way to the bathroom. Once he heard the door close quietly, he sat up in bed and rubbed his face with his long-fingered hands.

He couldn’t chase the image of Sakura’s naked back from his mind. He found himself wondering what the rest of her looked like beneath her clothes, what the texture of her skin felt like beneath his fingertips. He wondered if the scent of her skin would bathe the insides of his nose and mouth, if she would taste sweet. He wondered if she would ever want to touch him or want him to touch her. Much to his great distress, he found himself wanting her, wanting to know if any of those things were possible… and actually… he wished…

He wished that they would.

Syaoran scrubbed his face with his hands and willed the image of Sakura’s body and his wandering thoughts away. 

He slipped from the bed, pulled the sheets neatly back up, and straightened the pillows. Then, he quietly left Sakura’s bedroom to return to his own. He washed his face and brushed his teeth in his bathroom, ran a comb through his hair, and then slipped into clean jeans and a t-shirt. He was halfway back to Sakura’s room when she hustled out, whipping her head from side to side as if looking for something.

“Sakura-sama?”

She jolted and gripped the doorframe to steady her trembling frame. Her crippled leg was shaking violently.

Syaoran took a few steps toward her, hesitated, and then held out his hand. His fingers twitched and trembled.

Sakura smiled beautifully and reached for him. She slipped her hand through his until he was cupping her elbow in his palm and half-supporting half-steadying her. Her skin was warm and soft and dusted with fine caramel hairs. 

His mind strayed again to her naked back.

Syaoran shook his head to clear the beautiful image.

“Syaoran-kun?” Sakura asked quietly.

He wet his lips and murmured, “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he said. 

She didn’t look like she believed him, but she didn’t say anything. “Let’s go into the kitchen. What would you like for breakfast?”

“Anything is fine,” Syaoran said.

It was dark in the kitchen and Sakura gingerly freed her arm from his grip and crossed the room to flip on the lights. The moment her fingers touched the switch, the power flickered and crashed out. Darkness wrapped around them both like a thick quilt. 

…

Thunder growled and grumbled. Rain beat against the window panes, raged through the gutters, and pounded on the roof. The wind howled around the house. A branch from one of the rosebushes tapped against the window, slammed and rattled. The sky boiled with a distant flash of lightning. 

Sakura put her hand on the wall and groped her way to the kitchen counter. Her fingers collided with objects on the cool granite countertop. A loaf of bread fell off and rolled across the floor. Sakura slid her foot around, trying not to step on it. 

She had matches and candles in one of the drawers and a flashlight under the sink.

There was a sound, a whimper of fear and unease. From Syaoran, maybe? Or a trick of the wind?

“Syaoran-kun?” Sakura called curiously through the darkness. “Are you alright?”

“Y-yes.” His voice was shaky and fearful.

“It’s alright, Syaoran-kun. It’s just a power outage. I’m getting a flashlight,” she told him. “Just hang on.”

A whimper crawled from Syaoran’s mouth. 

“Hang in there, Syaoran-kun,” Sakura cooed and pulled open one drawer. She groped around in it and found a candle, but no matches. She tried the next drawer, scrabbled through its contents, found a box, and struck one. 

In the ensuing flash of light, Sakura glimpsed something from the corner of her eye.

Then, the match went out.

Lightning flared and Syaoran’s silhouette was framed in the bright window. Another whimper emerged from the young slave, from the young man.

“Syaoran-kun?”

“Y-yes, S-Sakura-sama…”

“Just one more minute, Syaoran-kun. Just hang on.”

Sakura struck another match and lit the candle. Then, she turned around.

…

Syaoran listened to Sakura’s halting scrape-drag-clunking gait as she moved through the dark kitchen. He heard her knuckles bang into the wall and she flipped on the light. It only remained for a moment before the power went out and the room was plunged into perfect darkness. Something hit the floor and rolled and he heard Sakura’s foot scraping along the floor.

Then, a hand gripped his shoulder tightly and jerked him back against something solid and hard. Immediately, he knew what it was and was going to let out a shout to warn Sakura when something ice-cold slithered across his throat. 

Knife… Syaoran’s mind raced and his heart began to slam against his ribcage.

A drop of hot blood rolled down his cold skin. 

He whimpered.

“Syaoran-kun? Are you alright?” Sakura asked. 

“Say yes,” a voice hissed against the shell of his ear.

A shiver of fear went down Syaoran’s spine and he whispered, “Y-yes.” His voice was weak and pitifully small.

“It’s alright, Syaoran-kun. It’s just a power outage. I’m getting a flashlight. Just hang on,” Sakura called.

An arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him back hard. Something wet and slimy, a sex-slither, crawled across his throat. A hand gripped his face and turned it roughly. “Sure, slave, just hang on. I won’t kill you until after I’ve had her…” a voice hissed against his ear.

Syaoran whimpered.

“Hang in there, Syaoran-kun.”

Sakura struck a match and he glimpsed her jade-green eyes in the flare of light. Then, the match hissed out. 

Lightning flared and Syaoran saw his shadow race across the hardwood floor. 

“I think I’ll have her ass, first. Then, maybe I’ll make you have her, too. Finally, I’ll tear her body apart and I’ll start with that leg,” the voice snarled and drew a long slow lick at the shell of Syaoran’s ear. 

A whimper crawled from his mouth, pushing through his teeth.

“Syaoran-kun?” Sakura called. Her voice sounded so sweet and innocent, wonderful. 

“Y-yes, S-Sakura-sama…” 

Syaoran’s mind returned to the image of her naked back and he decided that he could never let anything bad happen to her.

“Just one more minute, Syaoran-kun. Just hang on.” 

She cared for him.

Maybe… someday she would touch him gently… but first…

This Raitei would have to… go!

…

Sakura struck another match and lit a flickering candle. Then, she turned around with a glowing gleaming smile on her pretty face. 

“Syaoran-kun, see? It’s alright,” she said. Then, her face went chalk-pale and she gasped, “No!” Her hands started shaking so violently that the candle flame flickered. 

Syaoran felt the blade pressing tighter across his throat and more hot swells of blood ran down his chest. 

“Hello, Sakura,” Raitei hissed. Syaoran felt the man’s vocal chords vibrating against his shoulder. “Did you miss me? I missed you.”

“N-no,” Sakura whispered. She had enough mindset among her panic to set the candle down on the counter and then staggered backwards into the fridge. There was a sheen of sweat on her brow and her fingers were digging into her braced leg. 

Syaoran bit his lip and gripped Raitei’s arm where it was tight around his waist. He gave an experimental tug and the grip loosened. All of Raitei’s attention was on Sakura, thankfully. The sex-slither was making a slow torturous trail down Syaoran’s chest, sending tremors of terror down his spine.

Sakura’s leg buckled beneath her and she slowly slid to the floor. Her injured leg spread out in front of her but she managed to draw the other against her chest. Her jade eyes clouded with dark fear and some strands of hair stuck to her parted lips. A few crystal tears slid down her cheeks. 

“Oh God,” she whispered and her hands went to her face. “Sy-Syaoran-kun…? N-no…”

Raitei made a puzzled sound in his throat and that was as far as he got before Syaoran made his move. 

Syaoran slammed his elbow under Raitei’s ribcage, jamming the breath from his lungs. Startled, the man released him and stumbled back. 

The sex-slither began to stretch and grow and coil around Syaoran’s middle. He felt it begin to squeeze like a boa, constricting the air from his chest. He dug his fingernail into it and wrenched it off of him. Then, he threw it to the ground and crushed it under his bare foot. Gears and wire and sharp bits of metal speared through its slimy flesh and into the tender bottom of Syaoran’s foot. It let out an unearthly scream of broken grinding gears as the destroyed machine tried to continue operating.

Then, Syaoran lunged for Sakura and she reached out for him. He managed to grab her hand before Raitei slammed into him from the side. Syaoran’s head cracked against the floor and for a moment his vision swam. His eyes came back into focus as a foot was coming down to stomp on his face.

Sakura was screaming.

Syaoran quickly rolled and Raitei’s boot slammed down where his head had been only seconds earlier. Scrambling, Syaoran got to his feet and Raitei’s fist plowed into his gut. White-hot pain speared through his entire body, rocking the length of his spine and making him double over in agony. Then, Raitei grabbed the back of his head and smashed Syaoran in the face with his knee. Black threatened the edge of his vision and he once again slumped to the floor. 

This time, darkness took him for a moment.

…

Sakura was watching Syaoran being beaten by Raitei. Her heart hammered against her ribs and her stomach flopped with nausea. Tears ran down her face in a steady stream and she couldn’t draw a deep enough breath to sustain her trembling body. She saw Syaoran go down and, this time, he showed no signs of getting up. Raitei crossed the space between them and brought his foot back to kick Syaoran in the stomach or ribs again. Surely once he started he wouldn’t stop until Syaoran’s ribs were broken.

Sakura launched to her feet, but her crippled leg wouldn’t support her. She fell into Raitei rather than pouncing on him, but the effect was the same. He stumbled beneath her onslaught, he tripped over Syaoran’s sprawled form, and they both slammed into the wall.

A scream tore from Sakura’s lips and Raitei grunted. 

She dug her fingers through his hair and yanked. He reached behind his body and grabbed her limp crippled leg, hooking his fingers through her brace. Then, he hauled her off of him. Her head slammed into the floor next to Syaoran’s hand and then Raitei hung her upside-down by her leg.

“That was very brave of you. This worthless thing must be important to you, Sakura,” Raitei snarled close to her face. Then, he cut his eyes to Syaoran’s unconscious body. “I was going to hurt you in front of him, but I think tormenting the slave would in front of you would be better.”

“N-no,” Sakura gasped. She was close to Raitei’s thigh. She gripped it, pulled herself closer, and sunk her teeth into his flesh. 

He howled and released her leg. Her neck wrenched unpleasantly and a hot rush of blood filled her mouth. Forced to release him, Sakura sprawled across the kitchen floor. Her head landed on Syaoran’s chest and he let out a small grunt of pain. Then, his eyes fluttered open.

“Sy-Syaoran-kun?!”

Raitei brought his foot down on Sakura’s stomach and she cried out in agony. Immediately, Syaoran’s eyes shot open and Sakura felt his arm going around her shoulders. Raitei’s foot lifted and Syaoran rolled them both out of the path of his foot. He must have anticipated this because he managed to land another hard blow on Syaoran’s lower back. 

Pain speared through his and he grunted.

Sakura whimpered and cried out his name in concern quietly. 

Raitei grabbed Sakura’s ankle and dragged them both backwards. Sakura dug her nails into the hardwood floor, but succeeded in little more than ripping out her fingernails. Syaoran grabbed the corner of the counter with one hand and Sakura’s small body with his free arm. Raitei was unable to drag them any farther. He went for another vicious kick, but Syaoran managed to get his shin up to prevent the blow from landing on a more vulnerable part of his body. Then, he got off a clean kick just under Raitei’s kneecap.

The man went down howling in anguish, rolling on the floor, gripping his knee. 

“Let’s go!” Syaoran shouted and leaped to his feet. He dragged Sakura up after him by her hand. She stumbled into his back and he quickly scooped her up in his arms. He bolted past Raitei and barreled through the door into the storm. They were inches away from safety, from the protection of a wall and howling wind between them and Raitei, but there was a sound.

It was so loud! 

Sakura felt it slam into her like a shockwave, coming through Syaoran’s body into her. Heat splattered her face and Syaoran’s body lurched forward. For a moment, it seemed that he would fall, but something drove him onward still.

Another loud sound slammed through them. He pitched and staggered as if struck. Syaoran grunted, whimpered, and his breath wheezed in his chest, rattled in his lungs. Crimson blossomed on the front of his shirt.

It was then that it hit her, full-force.

Gunfire.

Gunfire.

Syaoran had been shot!

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	15. His Sacrifice

My turtle is just banging away in his cage. He’s driving me nutty!

X X X

Another shot was squeezed off, but missed him thanks to the protection of the whirling wind. Sakura felt the bullet whir through her hair and heard it slam into something in the forest. There was an unearthly howl.

Then, the house was between them.

Syaoran was gasping for breath and staggering. Sakura put her hand to the wound on his chest and he whimpered in agony. His gait faltered and his shoulder smashed into one of the pillars on the porch. He went down on his knees still clutching Sakura protectively to his chest, bent over her, and coughed violently. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth and dripped off his chin onto Sakura’s upturned face.

“Syaoran-kun,” Sakura whispered and though her voice was stolen by the wind there was endless concern in it.

Syaoran coughed harder and blood oozed beneath her hand where she was pressing on one wound. Blood trailed down the other side of his mouth, dripped off.

Behind them, Raitei barreled out of the house. His was limping, clutching his knee. Maybe Syaoran had broken it.

“Syaoran-kun!” She shouted. 

He opened his amber eyes and stared right into hers. Then, with his last dregs of energy or some supernatural willpower, he heaved himself to his feet. He set Sakura down, steadied her, and then whirled around to face Raitei. 

“Syaoran-kun,” Sakura said and gripped the back of his shirt. She tugged lightly on it. “Don’t! Let’s go!”

“S-Sakura-sama,” he whispered. His voice was snarled and broken with pain and fear. “You have to go…” He coughed and wheezed, more blood dripped onto the floor as thick and dark as red wax. “Go, please, Sakura-sama, please.”

Raitei was lifting the gun, but aiming past Syaoran to Sakura. 

“Go, Sakura-sama!”

Raitei pulled the trigger and Syaoran slammed into him from the side. The bullet whizzed past Sakura’s head and she stumbled backwards into the banister. She might have stayed to fight Raitei with Syaoran, but her slave suddenly lurched backwards and crashed into Sakura. She fell backwards over the banister and fell into one of the bushes below.

“Go!” Syaoran shouted.

She caught of glimpse of his face and he looked like a dying demon. His mouth was painted shiny and crimson-red with blood, running from either corners of his mouth. His eyes were framed with deep dark blue shadows, making his amber eyes glow in the dark. His chocolate hair hung in his eyes and in wisps across his face. His chest and back was a mess of blood and it was dripping off of him in streams. 

Raitei looked pissed off and his brow was drawn with pain. His dark black eyes were molten, sharp and fiery with hatred. His dark hair was plastered to his face with sweat. His face and clothes were smeared with Syaoran’s blood. “Sakura, if you go, I’ll make this slave feel what I was going to do to you tenfold!” He threatened and grabbed Syaoran by a fistful of his soft chocolate hair.

Syaoran let out a squeak of pain.

“No,” Sakura screamed. 

Syaoran dug his fingers into Raitei’s wounded knee and the man howled in agony. Syaoran managed to get his foot into Raitei’s gut and kicked him backwards as hard as he could. Raitei slammed into the house.

Syaoran hacked, gripping the banister tightly to steady himself. He looked down at Sakura. “Go, Sakura-sama, please go! I can’t hold him much longer. You have to get out of here! Please, go!” he gasped. “I can’t…” His sentence broke out in heaving coughs.

Tears welled in Sakura’s eyes. “No, Syaoran-kun,” she whispered.

“Please, go, Sakura-sama.”

“But–”

He coughed into his hands, more blood. “Maybe, if you really want, you can come back for me…” He hit his knees again and a pool of blood began to spread out around him. “Come back for me… if you really want to, Sakura-sama… But right now… I need you to… go!”

Sakura bit her lip, staggered to her feet, and ran. The last thing she saw was Raitei lifting the gun and aiming for her, but Syaoran leaped to his feet. She saw his body buckle with the force of the bullet slamming into him.

Then, Sakura was in the woods and she couldn’t see them anymore, but as she ran, she heard more gunfire.

…

It was dark and cold in the woods. Branches lashed at her face, tearing scrapes and scratches in her skin. Her brace caught on brambles and she stumbled, almost falling, every couple steps. Cold rain soaked her to the skin and burned her cuts. Small animals scrambled in the underbrush, fleeing from her as if she was the monster. Thunder crashed as loud as gunfire and lightning lit up the woods.

Finally, Sakura stumbled out onto the road. 

Headlights were coming through the darkness of the storm. Sakura waved her arms and screamed for the vehicle to stop and, surprisingly, it did. Most drivers wouldn’t stop for a rain-soaked blood-spattered young woman.

“Sakura-chan!”

The door flew open and Yuzuriha stepped out. Immediately, her dark locks were plastered to her neck and her clothes soaked through. Ryuo was peering at Sakura across the center consul, his face was white and his green eyes were bloodshot. 

“Yuzuriha-chan?!” Sakura shouted over the wind. There was an unpleasant little sob in her voice.

Yuzuriha engulfed her friend in her skinny arms and hauled her into the back seat of the car. “Ryuo-kun, take the wheel! Start driving. Get us out of here!”

“No!” Sakura screamed, deafening Ryuo as she lunged over the seat. “No! No! Syaoran-kun is still at the house! Raitei is going to kill him! We can’t go! No! No! No!” 

Yuzuriha dug her fingers into Sakura’s shoulders and dragged her back against the seat. “Sit down, Sakura-chan!” She slammed Sakura’s seatbelt across the young woman’s lap and wrestled her crippled leg into a better position. “Take a breath! Ryuo-kun, get my cell phone and call the cops. Head to Sakura-chan’s house, but try to stay hidden in case Raitei-teme is coming around.”

“No! Hurry! Step on it!” Sakura shouted and fought Yuzuriha trying to restrain her. “Hurry! He’s been shot! Raitei shot him!”

Yuzuriha said to Ryuo, “Get the paramedics, too, and hurry! Pull right up the driveway!”

Ryuo stepped on it, swerving across the wet road. He fetched Yuzuriha’s cell phone from her purse, punched in 9-1-1, and shouldered it to his ear. “I need police and paramedics to, umm…” He glanced desperately at Yuzuriha in the rearview mirror.

She took the phone from him and continued, “1016 Riverview Drive.”

“Stay on the line with me, please, ma’am. Can you tell me what happened?” The dispatcher asked in a calm and cool voice. “Ma’am?”

Yuzuriha glanced at Sakura. The young woman was tearing at her cuticles, peeling back the flesh and pulling on her fingernails as if to rip them out. “I… I don’t really know. It’s my friend’s house. I was on my way to see her and she came running out of the woods into the middle of the road,” Yuzuriha confessed. 

Ryuo turned sharply down Sakura’s street, squinting through the rain to spot her driveway, jouncing over potholes and a few fallen tree branches. Then, tires squealing on the gravel, the car hydroplaned. It fishtailed, spun, and for a split second a huge tree loomed in the bright headlights. Ryuo slammed on the brakes and swerved to the side, but to no avail. Then, the car slammed into it head-on. 

Yuzuriha didn’t have her seatbelt on. Her head cracked against the window, breaking it, and then she crumpled into the space between the seats.

Ryuo was stopped by the airbag, lolling like a ragdoll against it.

Sakura, belted securely by Yuzuriha to keep her from getting over the seat at Ryuo, jerked hard against the seatbelt and bounced her forehead off the seat in front of her. Her hair hung around her face in a caramel colored curtain. She saw ribbons of crimson making its ways through her tresses. Her stomach heaved and pain speared through her head. 

Through the heavy rain, Sakura saw her mailbox and bright headlights coming down the driveway. 

The last thing she saw were droplets of blood dripping from her hair to her knees and rolling down the side of her leg.

Then, everything went dark around her.

X X X

Didn’t really alleviate any cliffhangers there, did I? You poor people…

Questions, comments, concerns?


	16. Aftershock

Here we go!

X X X

Sakura woke up in a white room with hideous wallpaper and a big black television mounted on the wall. Her reflection was a skinny sick-looking little girl on the shiny obsidian screen. She was lying on an elevated bed, propped in a nest of pillows with a white blanket drawn up to her chin. Her face was the same shade at the blanket and her eyes were sunken way back in her head. Her hair was fanned out around her head, greasy and stringy with dark dried blood. A gauzy curtain was separated her bed from the rest of the room. There were no windows.

Hospital.

Hospital.

“Syaoran-kun?” Sakura whispered. 

Then, she lurched up in bed, gripping the side bar tightly with both hands. It was ice-cold. The IV and monitor wires hung off her skinny arms and she quickly unhooked herself from everything. She had had a lot of practice escaping hospital equipment when she was with Raitei and he put her in the hospital on a weekly basis. 

She peered over the side of the bed. Her brace was nowhere in sight, but there was a wheelchair patiently waiting for her. She struggled with the bar for a moment, finally got it down, and then jostled herself into the chair. It was lower and less comfortable than the one she had at home, but it rolled and she wouldn’t have to walk.

She reached out and pulled the thin curtain back. 

Yuzuriha was lying in the other bed. Her dark hair was spread out across the pillows and plastered to her neck with sweat. The entire right side of her face was one black swollen bruise. Her brow, eyebrows drawn tightly together and mouth pressed into a thin line, was wrinkled with troubled dreams or pain. 

“Yuzuriha-chan,” Sakura whispered. 

The door to the room opened and Ryuo stepped in. He looked pale and there were faint yellow-green bruises on his face and a big bloody split in his lip. He had a slight limp and a few Band-Aids plastered across his hands.

“Sakura-chan,” Ryuo said and he sounded surprised to see her up. 

“Ryuo-kun,” Sakura whispered and her voice was thick with tears. “Is she going to be okay?”

Ryuo looked at the floor. “She has a concussion. It’s bad… She’s in a coma.”

“Will she wake up?” Sakura whispered and gently touched the back of Yuzuriha’s hand. Her skin was cold.

Ryuo shrugged and then his shoulders slumped into a rounded curve of sadness. “They… don’t know…”

Sakura sniffled. “Oh God. I’m so sorry, Ryuo-kun…”

“I’m alright,” he whispered and stepped close to Yuzuriha’s bedside. He looked down at her troubled expression and gently touched her cheek with the tip of his finger. “I just wish she didn’t look like this. She looks like she’s suffering.”

Sakura put her face in her hands, sniffled, and then found some deeper resolve. “What about…?”

Ryuo was already shaking his head.

A lump formed in Sakura’s throat. “He’s not…?”

Ryuo shook his head again. 

“He’s alive… It’s just…”

“He was shot! Where is he? I need to see him!”

Ryuo was shaking his head again. “Sakura-chan…”

“Where is he, Ryuo-kun?”

“Sakura-chan, they… the police… they couldn’t find him…”

“Could find him?” Sakura whispered. “You mean…”

Ryuo nodded. “Raitei took him.”

“But he was so hurt… Without medical attention…” Sakura choked on her tears and her voice broke.

Ryuo nodded.

Syaoran was…

Syaoran was probably… 

Syaoran was probably dead.

…

There was a light slanting grey drizzle borne on a faint breeze. The air was humid and hot, steamy and thick with mosquitoes. There was a thick layer of fog hanging just above the grass, twisting through the dark woods. The world was dark, sun obscured by a thick blanket of grey clouds.

Kurogane paced the length of the porch at Sakura’s house, pausing occasionally to study one thing or another. Fai was kneeling down, fingers hesitating a few inches above the huge bloodstain on the boards. 

“Syaoran-kun was here,” Fai said. “That’s a lot of blood. Do you think he survived?”

Kurogane shook his head. “We found all those shells. If he took all those bullets, it would have taken a miracle,” he said darkly.

Fai sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. “God, this is a nightmare. Just when Sakura-chan goes out and finds someone to stay with her, this happens.” 

Kurogane leaned on the banister next to Fai and shoved his hands deep into his pockets. “You’re forgetting that we told the girl to get a slave in case he came after her. She needs someone to protect her,” he said.

“But, you know how Sakura-chan is. She wanted to heal him, help him, and now he’s dead because of her. You know this will eat her up inside,” Fai said and peered in the broken window. “Raitei was playing with her. You saw that thing on the floor, that slithery thing.”

“A sex-slither,” Kurogane supplied. “That’s what the dragon boy said it was called when he came by to explain what happened.”

Fai shivered. “That Raitei is one sick man.”

Kurogane looked at Fai from the corner of his crimson eyes. “We need to catch him and then all this will be over.”

Fai met Kurogane’s gaze. “It’ll never be over for Sakura-chan, you know that.”

Kurogane grunted and swatted at a bloodsucking insect. 

“She’s lost him. You know she’ll see it as sacrificing his life for hers and it’ll tear her up.”

Kurogane sighed. “There’s nothing she can do. The kid is gone.”

Fai looked out into the grey drizzle and murmured, “Is he…?”

…

There was a naked woman leaning over Syaoran, but he couldn’t see her face in the bright light behind her. He squinted, trying to make out his surroundings, but the light was blinding. Finally, he gave up and closed his eyes. His body, his skin, went hypersensitive and all he could feel were his many wounds and the woman’s touch.

She was stitching him up, sewing with a practiced hand. 

“Where am I?” Syaoran croaked.

She didn’t say anything, just continued sewing the torn edges of his flesh. 

He had been shot twice that he could remember and one of the bullets had ripped a huge tear across his stomach. The long gash was already neatly covered in a gauze pad and taped down securely, blood was spattered through the gauze.

Finally, the woman cut the thread and put down her needle with a quiet click. Then, she switched off the blinding light and Syaoran was plunged into deep black darkness.

He listened to the woman’s retreating footsteps, to the soft slap-slap of her bare feet on concrete, and in the distance something was dripping.

Then, he was alone.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	17. Raitei's Message

Grr! Fatal Frame is the best game ever but it’s so evil! I kept dying so now I’m going to write!

X X X

Sakura returned home two days later, courtesy of Fai, and drifted aimlessly through her empty halls. Finally, she went to Syaoran’s room and lay face down in his bed. His scent lingered vaguely on the sheets as he hadn’t been with her long enough to really permeate the room. It was like he had barely existed and would soon fade away completely…

As the dead often did…

Sakura felt tears burning at the backs of her eyes and squeezed them tightly shut, but the crystals wormed their ways free. The hot saline drops made slow trails down Sakura’s porcelain cheeks and seeped into Syaoran’s pillow.

Something crunched beneath the pillow.

Puzzled, Sakura sat up, sniffled, and tried to dry her eyes. The tears kept coming even as she fished beneath the pillow for the source of the sound. A piece of folded paper came away in her hand with dark ink seeping through the white parchment.

Sakura’s hand shook as she opened it.

 _Hello Sakura,_ it read. Words had been crossed out. _I am not pleased to inform you that your dear sweet sex slave survived my bullets, but he is still in my hands… not a safe place to be… Act fast and he may might be spared or save yourself at the cost of his life. Love always._

Beneath Raitei’s threat was a shaky splotchy sentence: _Maybe, if you really want, you can come back for me…_

The paper fluttered from Sakura’s limp fingers and hit the floor with a quiet whisper. For a moment, she choked on the stone in her throat and tears swelled blindingly on her lashes. Then, somehow, she managed to choke them back and get up from Syaoran’s bed.

She hobbled to her room, tore open her closet door, and fumbled around the back of it for the loose board. Prying it up with her ragged fingernails, Sakura’s thrust her arm into the space beneath. After a second of fumbling, she found the soft velvet bag she kept everything in. Hauling it out, Sakura dumped the contents in her lap.

Two guns, a short knife, and several cases of bullets tumbled out. She lifted the revolver, loaded it, and fired a round through her broken bedroom window with perfect aim. Content but unnerved by the thought of killing anyone, even someone as terrible as Raitei, Sakura stood up and fixed the guns into shoulder hostlers that she dragged out of the hidden cubby. 

Dragging her crippled leg, Sakura went to the window and looked out. Now, all she had to do was wait for Raitei to tell her where he was.

She would save Syaoran.

She would not allow Raitei to hurt him.

She would not allow him to hurt her again either.

This time, when they met, she would end everything between them.

Sakura bought Syaoran to protect her and he did, but now… to save him, she would save herself…

…

It was late. The sky was once again black with storm clouds and rain lashed down in cold slanting sheets. The wind howled like a monster through the eaves and broken windows. Sakura imagined she could smell Syaoran’s spilled blood on the porch outside. She was tired, exhausted, and her eyes burned from staring out the window at the ink-black night. 

The only things moving in the night were the trees and bushes whipping in the wind and being pelted by the rain.

Sakura was sitting at the kitchen table with her crippled leg propped up on the chair in front of her. She had one gun shoved in her shoulder holster and the other lying in her lap at the ready with her fingers wrapped around the trigger guard. The bullets were waiting in their boxes on the table, gleaming dimly in the pale yellow light of the candle she had lit. She took a long drag on the tumbler of water she had poured.

Finally, something moved in the dark.

A small dirty brown figure approached the sliding glass door, head down, feet dragging. When it reached the door, a twig-thin arm with horrible scars around the skinny bony wrists pressed sheet of paper against the door.

Sakura immediately bolted up and hurled the door open. 

The figure didn’t move and didn’t fight back, even as Sakura leaped on it and tackled it to the ground. They both went sprawling in the mud, but the figure lay limp and un-protesting beneath Sakura. The rain pummeled them both, whipping at Sakura’s back and smashing her hair into her face. The damp locks stung and lashed at her eyes, blinding her.

Finally, Sakura wrenched herself up on her elbows and stared down into the figure’s face. 

Immediately, her stomach heaved and she wretched.

It was a young woman, a young female slave, wearing a limp burlap dress that was filthy and threadbare. Like most slaves, even Syaoran, her body was skeleton-thin and covered in scars. Her hair was dark and sticky with blood and sweat and semen, hanging in stringy strands. Her eyes were sunken way back into her head and framed by thick black bruises. One eye had a huge gash across the brow bone and it was swollen almost shut. The other was clear guilty anguished brown. Her nose was crooked, broken, swollen, with a patch of thick dried blood beneath her nose. Her lips were cracked and split and then, sewn shut with heavy black thread. 

Silently, she raised the sheet of soaked paper and pressed it against Sakura’s chest.

Reflex had Sakura wrapping her fingers around the sheet and then stumbling back from the slave. The young female got up slowly and painfully and strode swiftly back into the dark woods. Sakura barreled back into the house as fast as she could, slipped on the wet tile floor, and slammed her chin into the table. Stars danced in front of her eyes, covered her spotty vision, and then she blacked out.

…

Sakura came around a few minutes later with her face in a puddle of blood and rainwater on the ice-cold kitchen tile. She had bitten her tongue when she fell and her mouth was flooded with blood. Spitting, she scrambled to her feet and pulled the sliding glass door shut, stopping the onslaught of rain pouring in on the floor. Her leg was numb and tingling.

She slumped into her chair and spread the wet piece of paper on the kitchen table.

The ink was running and spreading bright colors from the black ink. It read plainly in loose slave-cursive: _Something moves within the night that is not good and is not right. Hurry!_

Sakura’s head snapped up to look out the sliding glass door at the exact moment something slammed into it. The glass shattered into a mess of spider web cracks and then imploded. Shards of glass rained down on Sakura and she quickly shielded her eyes. 

Then, a hulking dark shape stepped through the broken doorway.

“No…”

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	18. The Second Obstacle

Ooh, was it ever hot today! 

I watched Legion and Paul Bettany was amazing! My latest infatuation is him as the archangel Michael! I’ve watched the movie three times just in the past two days! The special effects are amazing and there’s gore and battles and awesome actors, but it’s very God oriented.

X X X

_Something moves within the night that is not good and is not right. Hurry!_

“No…” 

The broken glass crackled underfoot and rain was once again pouring in, splattering on the tile and spreading the pool of pink-tinged water. Wind howled through the shattered glass frame and the curtains lashed like something alive, momentarily obscuring the hulking shape in the doorway. A low growl radiated from the shadow as it ducked in the broken door. 

Sakura staggered from her chair, leg dragging behind her. She managed enough sense to grab the gun she had left out on the table and clutch it to her body.

“Hello Sakura.” Raitei’s voice was full of red-hot hatred and he was a dark silhouette stepping up behind the monster lurking in the threshold. “I guess you didn’t take my warning fast enough,” he snarled. “If you had left as soon as the bitch handed you the note, you could be long gone by now.”

Sakura’s back hit the wall and, with shaking hands, she leveled her gun at his face. “Get back!” She whispered and then shouted, “Get away from me!”

Raitei laughed low in his throat and then spat. “Now, now, Sakura, if you keep up that attitude, I’ll just… take it out on your Syaoran…” he snarled.

Sakura’s throat ran dry and the gun quivered wildly in her hands. “Syaoran-kun is… alive?”

“Surprisingly, but he might not be for very long if you don’t get that gun out of my face,” Raitei said. 

Sakura bit her lip and lowered the gun a fraction of an inch. Her hands were steady again, but her eyes were rimmed with crystal tears. “Please… don’t hurt him…”

“Drop it,” Raitei snapped.

Her fingers turned limp and the gun clattered, spinning across the floor. 

Raitei stopped it with his foot and laughed again. “Were you really going to shoot me, Sakura?”

Jerkily, in a state of panicked joy at finding that Syaoran was alive, she nodded.

Raitei quirked an eyebrow. “Well, then, by all means,” and he unhooked a long chain from the collar of the hulking beast, “start shooting.”

The chain hit the floor with a loud jingle and then the dark shape launched itself at Sakura. Screaming, she didn’t have the sense of mind to do more than hunker against the wall with her hands protectively over her face. The scream was still in her throat when she realized that the thing hadn’t slammed into her.

She cracked open her jade-green eyes.

…

Fai and Kurogane decided to stop by the hospital to check in on Yuzuriha and Ryuo after seeing Sakura back into her house. Fai didn’t want to leave Sakura alone, but she had been drifting around in such a state of depression that Kurogane half-dragged Fai out of the house, saying that it would be best to just leave Sakura alone to think about what had happened. She’d come around or she’d die and there was nothing anyone could do about it. The only one who could save her now was Syaoran and he was…

They pulled into the hospital lot, Fai in his woody Station Wagon behind Kurogane’s big black Ford pick-up. They stood together in front of the hospital for a moment, looking at the storm-darkened sky.

“Think she’ll make it?” Fai whispered.

Kurogane grunted, noncommittal.

“If Syaoran-kun turns out to be dead, Sakura-chan will be so destroyed.”

Kurogane grunted.

“Kuro-daddy?”

He grunted.

“Is it possible for her to make it again? After the first time, with Raitei, I didn’t think she’d ever open her heart again. Then, she got Syaoran and, God, she was falling for him and he was healing for her. They were living for each other and I hoped they might fall in love,” Fai whispered.

Kurogane turned to look at Fai from the corner of his crimson eyes. “Love? Even if they had, they could never have been together.”

Fai shivered.

“The kid is a slave and the girl is not. If they had been together, fallen in love, everyone around them would ridicule them.” Kurogane pointed out sadly.

Fai protested, “We would be there for them. Yuzuriha-chan and Ryuo-kun would stick with them. No one else matters.”

Kurogane shook his head and gripped Fai’s shoulder tightly in his big hand. “What if they had kids? Those kids would suffer every single day because their parents were a scorned union.”

Tears gathered in Fai’s blue eyes and he shuddered. “But–”

Kurogane shook his head. “No, Fai, no.” Then, he turned his face to the dark sky. “They can’t ever be…”

It started to rain.

…

Ryuo was bent over Yuzuriha’s hand, holding it tightly in both of his. He hadn’t eaten or slept since the accident. He just sat there, holding her as if that would keep her anchored to him. God, if she died, he would be sold again, back into the world of blood and pain and back-breaking labor. He was property, to be sold upon his owner’s passing. 

The doctors didn’t know if she would ever wake up. 

Tears squeezed behind his green eyes and swelled beneath his lids.

And if she didn’t…

His back wracked with sobs.

If she died…

Ryuo wouldn’t be in as bad a spot as Syaoran would be. Ryuo was a field slave, a work slave, a body slave. Syaoran was a sex slave, a skin slave, the worst kind of slave. If Sakura died and Syaoran went back to a cruel woman’s, or man’s, bed to be filled by them, he would be destroyed. The body was the soul’s last sanctuary and, as a sex slave, the body was demolished like an unwanted building. Sakura had applied a fresh coat of paint to Syaoran and he was beginning to think himself at least a hut. Being sold again would return him to a heap of rotted broken boards.

But Syaoran was dead and it didn’t really matter.

Yuzuriha was still alive… for now…

There was a quiet knock at the door.

Ryuo quickly sniffled and dried his face. “Yeah, come on in,” he called.

The door eased open and Fai’s blond head and deeply saddened red-rimmed sapphire eyes poked around the threshold. Kurogane growled and shoved the slender man through the doorway with a huff before entering behind him. He closed the door quietly.

“Hey, kid,” Kurogane said. “How’s it going?”

“How’s Yuzuriha-chan?” Fai asked and took a seat at the young woman’s bedside. He gripped her hand and then rubbed it vigorously. “She’s cold.”

Ryuo shivered and pulled the blankets up tighter under her chin. “Where’s Sakura-chan?”

“We brought her home,” Kurogane said. 

“Is she there alone?” Ryuo asked.

Fai nodded.

Ryuo laid Yuzuriha’s hand down on the covers and pushed back from the bed. He stood and paced to the bathroom, then back to the bed. “Someone should be with her,” he murmured. “Something is going to happen.”

“Something bad?” Fai whispered.

Ryuo nodded and then turned to Kurogane. “Will you drive me there?”

“Now?” The big man asked incredulously. 

Ryuo nodded. 

“Alright, sure.”

“Fai-san, will you stay here with Yuzuriha-chan?” Ryuo asked. His voice broke.

“Of course, Ryuo-kun,” Fai said and rubbed Yuzuriha’s cold pale hand.

Outside, the storm whipped itself into a greater fury.

…

Raitei was holding back the creature with one hand and leering at Sakura around it. “Afraid?”

Sakura scrambled to her feet and ripped the other gun from her shoulder holster. She fired off three shots with her eyes squeezed tightly shut. There was an insane howl of rage and pain and the thunk of one bullet tearing into the drywall. 

“Get her!” Raitei screamed.

The creature launched itself at Sakura and she ducked. It slammed into the wall, denting and cracking it. Then, it landed hard on top of Sakura’s lower body, crushing her crippled leg and wrenching her good one. Screaming, Sakura fought against the creature. 

Then, she realized what it was…

X X X

I was going to keep going but I decided to just keep you all hanging with the cliffhangers.

Sorry.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	19. Pull the Trigger

Blarg. No more cliffhangers for a while. 

Shock shock shock.

X X X

She managed to kick it off of her with her strong uninjured leg and then she got a good look at it.

Pale scarred skin and bruises, beaten to a bloody raw pulp, dark chocolate hair, glow-in-the-dark eyes, split lip, battered skeleton-thin body… For a moment, Sakura’s heart turned to lead in her chest and skipped a few beats. 

Syaoran…

Oh God, please, no…

The young man leaped for her, mouth falling open, teeth bared in a snarl of rage and pain. He grabbed Sakura by her shoulders and slammed her into the wall brutally hard. Her head knocked against it, bounced, and stars danced in front of her eyes.

“Syao–” Her voice cracked off as he drove his fist into her stomach and she doubled over, heaving and retching. He got his foot on her chest and shoved her back into the wall, pushing all the air from her lungs with a whoosh. Their bodies were so close, she could feel the burning heat coming off of him.

Then, she looked up into the young man’s face, managing to cradle it between her palms. His lips pulled back over his teeth.

Syaoran! 

It wasn’t him…!

Sakura shoved her gun into the young man’s ribcage and fired off a round. He staggered back, howling and screaming in agony. Blood gushed across the floor, spreading in a thick waxy pool across the tile. Sakura’s leg gave out, slamming her to her knees.

“Shit, no,” Sakura swore as her leg spread limply out in front of her. She grabbed it by the brace and tried to heave herself back to her feet using the wall for support.

Raitei was laughing. “Jeez, Sakura, that was powerful. Go on, slave, get her. Finish her off!”

The young man launched himself at her again. Sakura scrambled to avoid him, but her leg gave out again. She slammed into the tile and the slave rammed through the wall. If Sakura had been between him and the wall, she would have been crushed like an unripe fruit.

In the cloud of plaster dust, Sakura saw Raitei pulling a knife from a sheath in his boot.

She scrambled to her feet again and tried to run. Raitei caught her by her caramel hair and jerked her back. She felt the ice-cold edge of his knife digging into her side, pressing between her ribs. She got her elbow into his gut and his breath rushed from his lungs. He shook her by her hair, lifting her from the floor.

A scream welled up in Sakura’s throat and she was forced to drop her gun. It clattered and spun, sliding beneath the kitchen table, out of reach. Raitei had her other gun shoved in the waistband of his jeans just above his crotch. Sakura squeezed her eyes shut and allowed her body to dangle by her hair. Then, she reached for her second gun and was squeezing the trigger even as she was pulling the weapon free.

Raitei screamed in pure agony and dropped her. He fell, gripping his crotch and trying to stem the rush of blood. 

Sakura landed on her good leg at a strange angle, wrenching her ankle. She was unable to stand anymore but Raitei couldn’t get up either. She had blown off his cock in a way he didn’t enjoy. 

Somewhere in the house, Sakura could hear the slave crashing around.

She dragged herself into a sitting position and leveled the gun at Raitei’s writhing form. 

“Where is Syaoran-kun?” Sakura demanded.

Raitei started laughing almost hysterically. “Are you going to shoot me, Sakura?”

She nodded.

He laughed again.

The slave slammed into Sakura from behind, smashing her face into the cold tile with a crack. Her teeth plunged through her lip and blood flooded her mouth. Choking and gagging, she tried to fight her way from beneath the young man. 

“Stop, please!” She screamed. “I don’t want to hurt you! Stop!”

He got his hands around her throat and squeezed. Black dotted her vision and she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. She got her gun between them and fired a burning bullet directly into his heart. The slave collapsed on top of her, crushing the air from her lungs and smothering her. 

Gasping, Sakura struggled beneath him.

Raitei got up, holding himself and blood dripping between his legs. He stood over Sakura so that the hot blood splattered on her face.

“Well, well, Sakura, I guess we die together.” He said with a throat sound of pain. “You shot off my dick.”

She spat. “Sucks to be you.”

More blood dripped on her face, got into her eyes. Raitei reached down his pants and there was a horrible sound as he pulled his cock free from whatever tendrils of flesh that had been holding it to his body. The bloody meat barely resembled a body part. It was just a lump of flesh and he fell to his knees by Sakura’s head. She turned her face away when he tried to put it into her gasping mouth. 

“It’s worse to be you, Sakura,” Raitei said. “You don’t know where you’re slave is, do you?”

She turned and looked at him. 

His face was pale and his eyes were without light. “All I wanted was you to be with me, Sakura. I just wanted you, but you wouldn’t have me.”

“You hurt me!”

Raitei slapped her and then laid his severed dick on her chest. “Sticks and stones, love. You broke my heart and I broke yours. Let’s see if your Syaoran will ever look upon your face again with those eyes of his,” he snarled. “You know where he is…”

Then, Raitei died. He slumped over Sakura’s exposed face. The rest of her body was pinned beneath the dead slave. Each breath was more shallow and coppery with spilled blood. Unable to breathe, darkness once again took Sakura, as it had when Raitei destroyed her leg in the little shack in the woods…

…

Kurogane and Ryuo pulled up the drive, parked, and quickly dashed through the rain to Sakura’s porch. Ryuo rang the doorbell and they waited. Sakura did not come to the door and there was dead quiet inside the dark house.

“Sakura-chan!” Ryuo shouted. 

Kurogane pounded his fist on the door.

They exchanged glances. 

Something was wrong!

Kurogane kicked down the door and they rushed inside. 

There was a pile of bodies in the kitchen–Raitei and his tormented slave, in a spreading puddle of blood. Sakura was laid on the tile, unconscious and covered in dark blood. Sitting beside her and quietly smoothing her caramel hair was Raitei’s abused female slave. She looked up when Ryuo and Kurogane entered the kitchen. Terror crossed her face and she grabbed Sakura’s gun. She put it into her mouth and her eyes rolled white with fear.

“Don’t!” Ryuo shouted.

She pulled the trigger and the chamber clicked empty. 

Ryuo managed to capture her in his arms and he shushed her, rocking slightly, back and forth, back and forth. “Kurogane-san, Sakura-chan is…?”

Kurogane knelt beside her and pressed his fingers to her throat. “Alive. She’s alive.” He went to fetch a phone and call an ambulance, leaving Ryuo with Sakura and the slave girl.  
Raitei was dead. His reign of terror on Sakura’s life was over. Dead and gone.

She gripped the front of Ryuo’s shirt in her beaten hands and made a gun with her hands. She put it to her temple and looked imploringly at Ryuo. She pulled the trigger finger, pleading for death, pleading, begging. 

Ryuo shook his head. “No, it’s alright. It’s alright now. You don’t need to die.”

She just kept pulling the trigger.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	20. The Shack

Alright! This is a two arc story and the first arc ha now ended. Moving on to the second obstacle! Raitei is dead! Yay! Someone send flowers to his funeral. Make sure the card says: HAHA YOU BASTARD! BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL!

Sorry, I’ve had too much caffeine. Ehehe…

Second arc: there is still the matter of Syaoran being a slave. He can’t exactly love Sakura as he is. Plus… dun dun dun… what did Raitei do to him while he was in his possession? You will find it all out in this chapter. So SakuraSou1307, take a chill pill!

Stay tuned everybody!

X X X

The bed waited in the darkness like a crouching spider. The tall posters were curled dead legs all draped with dust-colored velvet curtains. It was surrounded, illuminated, by crimson candles in tall bronze stands. Wax dripped from the sides, ran down the sides, and splattered across the floor like pools of old blood. The bed was made up with crisp red silk sheets and a crocheted black blanket with the top sheet folded neatly back. Silver chains hung from the head- and footboard, lying spread across the sheets. 

In the dimness of the candlelight, Sakura could make out the many sex toys, bondage objects, and implements of torture hanging on pegs on the walls. A cat-of-nine-tails whip was lying on the floor near the bed, splattered in either blood or red wax. There was a puddle of dirty clothes in the corner, a lurking dark shape that loomed like a monster in the dark. 

Sakura’s body was bare except for a shift of paper-thin blue fabric wrapped around her nudity and tied behind her. Her crippled white-scarred leg was spread out before her, un-braced, weak and scrawny, across the roughhewn concrete floor. 

There was a dark silhouette lying like a broken doll on the bed. Chalky-pale bloodless skin shone in the dim candlelight, spattered with blood and black bruises and deep ugly wounds. Scars shone bright white, like misplaced stars. Chocolate hair, matted with blood and stickiness, was spread across one of the pillows.

Sakura’s small voice was eerie in the silence. “S-Sy…Syaoran-kun…” she whispered weakly. “N-no…” 

As she tried to drag herself to her feet, the flesh wore off her palms and feet and knees. Unable to stand on her crippled leg, Sakura crawled on her belly like a worm from a bird to the illuminated bed and the broken figure on the cool silk sheets. The rough concrete tore through her elbows and knees, skinned the entire length of her dragging injured leg, and she dug her nails into the floor to pull herself along the floor. Her fingernails ripped and her blood was added to the wax on the floor.

She made it to the circle of candles, knocked one over, and used the stand as a crutch to push herself up. Her foot slid on the hot wax, burning the skinned parts of her foot. She gripped the side of the bed, leaning heavily on the mattress which sagged and creaked under her weight.

The body’s face was cast in dark shadow.

Sakura dragged a candle closer to illuminate the figure, scraping on the concrete horribly. Her ensuing sob of grief almost put out the flickering flame. In anguish, she slumped to her knees at the side of the bed, gripping the sheets in her fists and burying her face in the covers.

It was Syaoran.

“N-no… no… please, no…” she sobbed.

His face was blackened with bruises, eyes swollen tightly shut. There was a huge gash across his cheekbone and another deep cut across his right eye. His lip was split like a piece of overripe fruit and coated with thick dried blood. The blood trailed down his throat and chest, thick black rivulets. His chest was a mess of lacerations from a whip, maybe from that discarded cat-of-nine-tails, and a few places had been filleted to the bone. Flaps of tattered ripped flesh hung from the curve of his ribs. Surely his back looked the same, maybe worse. His legs were drilled through, just like hers. Shards of bone poked through the flesh, peeking at the world outside his body. 

He had been beaten within an inch of his life…

Sakura heaved herself back to her feet using the bed as support. Then, she slipped her body onto the creaking sagging bed, almost spooning up alongside his beaten body. She wrapped her arm over his midsection and he was stone-cold to the touch, freezing, and his body was stone-hard.

She sobbed into his freezing naked skin and felt as if her tears turned to ice on her cheeks.

“Sy-Syaoran-kun…?” she whispered and pressed her hand over his chest. Cold blood oozed out of the wound, rolling down his the brutalized curve of his ribs. No heartbeat throbbed beneath the battered flesh. “N-no… please, no… Syaoran-kun…”

Her hand slowly made a path from his skinned beaten chest up his bloodstained throat to press at where the throb of his jugular should have been. Nothing pulsed beneath his skin, no heartbeat, no rush of pumping blood. His skin was cold and sallow and his blood was icy and he had no heartbeat. 

Sakura’s chest wracked with sobs and she bowed her face into his cold chest. Her tears mingled with his blood and ran on the silken sheets, invisible on the blood-colored cloth. 

He was dead.

Syaoran was dead.

Raitei had killed him.

Sakura had come too late…

A horrible sob crawled up her throat, pressing against her heart and filling her chest until there was no room inside her for any emotion other than sorrow. She clutched his cold body to her warm one, feeling the chill of death spreading from him to her. Whimpering in anguish, Sakura pressed her lips to the cold side of his neck, sucking as if that would return his heartbeat to him. It did not.

The sob tore free, echoing in the empty room. 

Beneath it, Sakura could hear her heart breaking.

… 

Sakura shot bolt upright in her bed, scream of agony still caught in her throat, unable to recall what was a dream and what was reality. For a moment, she gripped the sheets, disoriented and heartbroken. Was Raitei really dead and gone from her life? Was Syaoran gone, tortured and tormented and beaten to death? Tears burned in her jade-green eyes. 

Then, Sakura had the sense of mind to take in her surroundings. She was in the hospital, again, but she was alone in this room. Yuzuriha-chan and Ryuo-kun were not there with her. Again, she freed herself from the wires and IV, pushed down the sidebar, and peered over the edge of the bed. No wheelchair or brace waited for her and the only clothing she had was the plain blue hospital shift. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and waited for her toes to touch the cold linoleum floor. 

She tried to stand and her injured leg collapsed beneath her, folded like a broken chair. Thankfully, there was no obstacle other than the floor for her to smash her body into, but there was also nothing close enough to use as a crutch and get to her feet again. Crawling a few paces, déjà vu slammed into Sakura’s heart like a tidal wave. 

Was she dreaming again?

Had finding Syaoran dead been the reality and this hospital room was a dream?

She managed to push herself upright into a sitting position. She grabbed the bed and hauled herself to her feet again. She was weakly standing, pressing both hands to her crippled leg as if force of will could keep it straight and strong. She took a step and crashed to the floor again.

The door opened and a bar of warm amber light spilled across her prone body.

“Sakura-chan?!” Fai gasped and warm hands were instantly hauling beneath her armpits. She was lifted from the cold floor and set back on the bed. Fai cupped her face and raised it to meet his jewel-colored eyes. “Sakura-chan, what are you doing up?”

“Sy-Syaoran-kun…” Sakura croaked. “Where is Syaoran-kun?”

Fai shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Sakura-chan…”

Tears swelled on her eyes. So it hadn’t been a dream…!

But Fai continued, “We can’t find him. We can’t find him anywhere.”

Sakura let her breath out in a rush, a gasping sigh of relief. “The shack,” she whispered.

“What?” Fai asked. 

“He’s in the shack. That shack… Raitei told me.” Suddenly, Sakura gripped Fai’s arms tightly, digging her ragged fingernails into his flesh. “Is he… Is he dead? Did I kill him?”

Unsure, Fai nodded. “Yes, he’s dead.”

Sakura let out another sigh of relief and happy tears coursed down her face. “He’s dead. I’m safe…” she whispered. “Syaoran-kun’s safe… We’re all safe now… He’s gone…”

Fai nodded and cradled Sakura against his chest. “Yes, baby, he’s gone. He’s dead. You’re safe. It’s over. It’s all over now…”

But it wasn’t…

…

Sakura had been unconscious for three days and Syaoran had been in Raitei’s possession for three days before that. Almost a week… a whole week…

After promising Sakura that he’d let Kurogane know where to look for Syaoran, Fai managed to get her back to sleep. He covered her with a thick blanket and kissed her forehead delicately. She murmured and cried out in her sleep as if with nightmares. Fai smoothed her caramel hair against the pillows and brushed her bangs out of her eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Sakura-chan,” he whispered. “I think Kurogane and I have made a big mistake in telling you to get a slave. I think this is going to be more harm than help.” He perched on the edge of her bed and looked at the lighted curve of her porcelain skin. “You and Syaoran…” he shook his head “…you can never be…”

Tears welled up in Fai’s sapphire eyes and made slow trails down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered again. Then, he looked out the window at the dark velvet night. “And I’m sorry, Syaoran-kun, too. I think I’ve given you both hope that is impossible.”

Fai sat with Sakura for a long moment, roiled with self-loathing. Then, he left her room and went to call Kurogane.

Hopefully when they found Syaoran… he would already be dead…

…

Kurogane’s phone vibrated noisily on his nightstand. He almost didn’t answer it, but the buzzing was so persistent that he finally rolled over, slammed his hand over it, and pressed Send.

“Hello?” he grunted.

“Kurogane, it’s Fai.”

“Fai…? This had better be good. Do you have any idea what time it is, you moron?”

“It’s 3:17,” Fai said flatly. “Sakura-chan woke up a awhile ago and she says Syaoran-kun is in Raitei’s shack.”

“The shack where he drilled the girl’s leg?” Kurogane asked.

There was silence on the phone.

“Fai, are you nodding?” Kurogane growled.

“Oh, yes! Sorry.”

“Alright,” Kurogane grunted and swung his legs out of bed. He started pulling on a pair of pants. “I’ll get a group together to go out and get the kid immediately.”

“Umm, Kurogane…”

“What?” Kurogane snapped, belting his pants up securely.

“Do you think… maybe… you could just leave him for a few more days…?”

Kurogane’s heart skipped a few beats. “What did you just say?”

“They’re going to suffer! They’re falling in love…”

“And you think it would be better to kill the kid? To let him die?” Kurogane growled.

Weakly, Fai whispered, “Yes. I do.”

Kurogane hung up on the doctor. When his phone rang again, he put it on silent. He pulled on his coat, grabbed his gun and car keys, and left for the police station. He wouldn’t allow the kid to die and he wouldn’t kill him either. 

…

The shack was small, buried in the woods behind Raitei’s beautiful white colonial house, just an entrance a deep underground assortment of rooms. It was more like a lean-to of broken rotten half-painted boards. The door hung on rusted crooked hinges, padlocked shut.

Kurogane shot off the thick iron padlock and tried to open the door. The rain had swelled it and he was forced to kick the rotten door in. It clattered down a dark flight of narrow stairs that led down into the bowels of the earth. Kurogane went down the narrow stairs first, holding his gun low but at the ready. Two other officers came down behind him. 

Something dripped in the darkness.

The lower rooms were cold and lightless with roughhewn concrete floors. The air was heavy with the scent of mold, mildew, blood, and sex.

“Look for a light switch,” Kurogane growled to the other officers. His voice echoed against the stone walls.

“Here! I’ve got it.” 

There was a sharp crack as the break was thrown and harsh white light flooded the room. Kurogane squinted in the sudden glare of brightness and searched for the kid or any sign of the kid. There was fresh blood splattered on the floor. There was a doorway at the far side of the room and most of the light was generating from there so Kurogane hurried to it.

There was a steel gurney and blinding Emergency Room lights set up. Blood, rags, and bullets were laid in separate trays beside the gurney. Bloodstained jeans and a t-shirt were cut into pieces and heaped on the floor beside the gurney.

Kurogane paused to look and counted six bullets. 

God, it would be remarkable if the kid was alive, but it looked like he had gotten some urgently needed medical attention.

Another dim doorway waited and Kurogane hustled through it, too. That was the room he and Fai had found Sakura’s body torn apart and he was loathe to go into it again. The room was the same as Kurogane remembered it. 

There was a bed made up with dirty bloody sheets with chains attached to the head- and footboard. Numerous sex slaves had been raped and beaten and murdered on that bed or chained to it while they starved to death. 

Beside it was a workbench, for lack of a better word, with shackles and restraints. That was where Sakura had been chained. Raitei had been looming over her with goggles on, blood splattered all over his face, and a power drill in his hand. Sakura had been unconscious when they found her with her leg filleted apart, bones shattered and sticking out, blood coursing down the bench. Her blood still stained the wood.

There was also a chair, also with shackles and nails driven all through it. Raitei used to put Sakura in it while he forced his dick into her mouth, impaling her on the spikes while he tormented her. She had scars from it and a scar in the corner of her mouth from his cock filling her mouth to the point where her flesh tore.

Kurogane felt horrible bad vibrations rattling through his bones. He hated that bastard Raitei with all his heart. The only thing he wished was that the man was still alive so he could torture him as he deserved. Raitei deserved to suffer after all he had done, but Sakura had killed him quickly. 

Shivering, Kurogane groped around in the dark and flipped on the lights. In the rush of illumination, he saw the kid.

Syaoran was chained to the filthy bed, spread-eagle and completely naked.

“Shit,” Kurogane swore and rushed to the kid’s side. He checked for a pulse and found one hammering strongly beneath the translucent pale skin. The dark blue vein throbbed visibly. “Thank God,” he grunted.

One of the other officers appeared at his elbow with the keys to the chains and they quickly freed the young man. The other officer found a blanket and wrapped Syaoran’s naked body in it. The young man was solidly unconscious, head lolling, body limp and useless.

“Damn, look at him,” one of the officers muttered. 

Kurogane took Syaoran’s shoulders from the other officer and cradled him against his chest. The kid was cold to the touch and he whimpered in fear and agony. Gently, carefully, Kurogane picked Syaoran up. “Search through this place. See if anyone else is trapped in here,” Kurogane ordered. 

“Roger.”

While they searched the shack, Kurogane carried Syaoran out of the darkness into the star-filled night. An ambulance was already waiting and Kurogane handed the young man off to the EMTs. He watched as they peeled away the blanket and took in the state of Syaoran’s body.

“Jesus,” one of the EMTs whispered and dabbed at a long gash along the side of his jaw with a wad of cotton and alcohol. 

Syaoran whimpered and his amber eyes fluttered weakly open. They were bloodshot and red rimmed. One was cloudy as if blind and watered. Croaking weakly with his raw voice, Syaoran began to struggle against the EMTs. 

“Hush, hush,” someone said and slipped a needle into his flesh. The anesthesia took over his body quickly and Syaoran slumped back into darkness.

The blanket was pulled the rest of the way down from his body and someone gasped. “What is that?!”

Kurogane, who had turned his back on the scene in the ambulance, turned to see what caused such a ripple of shock to run through them. Then, his blood ran cold and his heart skipped a few beats in his chest. His hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Carved in the alabaster skin of Syaoran’s stomach was the bloody and ragged word: SLAVE. It was deep and thick and would leave twisted ugly scars. 

“There’s another on his back, here,” one of the EMTs said to Kurogane.

Kurogane wet his bloodless lips. “What’s it say?”

“SAKURA’S FAULT,” the EMT said. “What does that mean?”

Kurogane’s blood ran cold.

X X X

Alright, SakuraSou1307, you have now found out what happened to Syaoran! Are you calm now? There are more injuries on him, but those are the most pressing. Once I get him to the hospital, you’ll find out what else happened to him.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	21. All In Safe Hands

Yawn. It’s so early!

The insomnia strikes again.

X X X

Kurogane refused to allow Fai to tend the kid when the ambulance screamed into the hospital Emergency Room. Kurogane had been following right behind the ambulance the entire way back from Raitei’s shack. Syaoran might have been safe from people who wanted to break his soul and torture him, but his life was not safe, not yet, and Kurogane would not allow him to be killed now, not when they were so close to salvation. 

_"Do you think… maybe… you could just leave him for a few more days…?"_ Fai’s words just played over and over and over in his head, echoing and twisting like snakes. The kids were falling in love, two broken beautiful souls, and Fai thought it best to rend them apart because they came from different worlds. If their love was strong, then they could make in through this.

At least… That’s what Kurogane had thought…

The way Syaoran had been torn apart and scarred threw more than a few wrenches into the works.

God only know what Raitei had said and done to him. In six days, the kid’s spirit could have been shattered.

…

Sitting in a chair, tucked out of the way of the ER surgeons and nurses, Kurogane watched them work methodically through the kid’s body. 

The bullet wounds in his chest had been shakily sewn shut with thick black thread. The stitches weren’t the best, but the wounds were clean and it would cause more trouble to take the stitches out and re-sew them than to just leave them in. If signs of infection showed, then they would have to be removed. Four of the bullets had slammed through the kid and exited his body. One had stuck deep in the joint of his shoulder and the other had carved a deep slice across his stomach, practically underlining the word SLAVE. The penetrating bullet had already been removed. Since six slugs had been found in the shack, it seemed that Raitei had collected his expended bullets. God, he had expected to get away with what he had done and since Syaoran was a slave, he probably would have.

The EMTs taped several sterile pads of gauze over the other gashes in Syaoran’s chest. Someone had carved into him with a knife, tracing unknown patterns on his porcelain-pale skin, the paper-thin lines would leave faint scars. His thighs were a mess of crisscrossed lines from a whip, not deep but stiff with dried blood and painful. The place over his heart had been skinned, filleted, peeling back the flesh to the bone. For a normal person, the EMTs would have done a skin graft, but for a slave… they saturated it with alcohol to kill infection and taped a pad of gauze over it. 

The huge gash spanning the length of his jaw was covered with gauze and the split in his lip was dabbed at with hydrogen peroxide. The rest of his face was unmarked, still gorgeous and pale and twisted with a slave’s agony. His brow wrinkled in his unconsciousness and he let out a little cry of pain.

One of the doctors, not Fai, turned to Kurogane. “Surprisingly little damage has been done to him. The bullets and these words are the worst of his injuries,” she said and smiled but it was distressed and strange. “Did his… master do this to him?”

Kurogane shook his head. “It’s a police matter,” he said.

“Oh,” she said and turned back to Syaoran. Her fingers were tender as she gently brushed some of his matted chocolate hair out of his eyes. His brow was slick with cold sweat and he cried out from his abyss of unconsciousness. 

Kurogane rose from his chair and came to stand at her side since they appeared to be wrapping up on the kid’s body. “Is he dreaming?” 

“He’s under anesthesia,” she said. “He shouldn’t be dreaming and he should be unaware of the pain.”

Kurogane wet his lips. “So, he’s waking up?”

She shook her head again. “Not for a while…”

“But…”

“He’s been through Hell,” the doctor said. “It looks like he’s not safe even in his sleep.” She shook her head sadly and carefully measured his pulse against the wall clock. “His body will pull through,” she said finally, “But I’m not certain about his mind.” She turned away from Syaoran to face Kurogane. “I’d like to refer him some sleeping pills or some antipsychotics, but…”

“He’s a slave,” Kurogane finished.

She nodded and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Can you get him some pain pills?” Kurogane asked.

She shook her head. “There’s nothing I can do…”

Kurogane closed his eyes and laid his palm on Syaoran’s cold hand. The kid twitched and jerked, whimpering and moaning in his unconsciousness, and Kurogane retracted his hand. “Thanks for what you’ve already done.”

“It wasn’t much.”

“It was enough.”

Their eyes met and the doctor nodded with a sad little half-moon smile. She stripped off her gloves and exited the room, talking quietly to a few of the nurses, arranging Syaoran a room. 

Kurogane’s conversation with Fai beat at his temples like a pulse of bad blood. 

_Do you think… maybe… you could just leave him for a few more days…?_

_What did you just say?_

_They're going to suffer! They're falling in love…_

_And you think it would be better to kill the kid? To let him die?_

_Yes. I do._

Shit, the kid would pull through. The kid would live! 

Sakura and Syaoran might not have an easy road ahead of them, but at least they would have a chance to walk it!

…

Ryuo was in another hospital room, next door to Yuzuriha’s, with the female slave whose mouth had been sewn shut, the one who had begged for death. She had been fighting so terribly to cut her IV and kill herself that a few male nurses had roped her to the bed. Now, she resigned herself to lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling blindly, unblinking. He would have thought she was dead if it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest.

The stitches had been removed from her mouth and the scratchy burlap sack she had been wearing was replaced with a less scratchy hospital gown. Her dark onyx hair was spread out across the sheets and her waxy chalky-pale skin shone in the moonlight streaming through the window. Her eye was no longer swollen shut and the gash above her brow bone was stitched neatly shut and both brown eyes were framed by purple-black bruises. Her split lips were clean and the dried blood had been dabbed off. Her broken nose had been set and taped. But like Syaoran she was remarkably bear of grievous injuries. 

Outside, the night stretched on and on, full of sparkling diamond stars.

“It’s okay, you know,” Ryuo whispered and gently touched her restrained hand. “You’re safe now.”

She didn’t react, just continued staring blankly at the ceiling as if she saw something there that held her attention captive. 

Ryuo rubbed his face with his long fingered hands and hissed as the half-healed bruises spiked pain behind his eyes. He picked idly at one of the Band-Aids on his fingers, investigating the cut beneath it. Broken glass had been embedded in his hands and a single shard in his lip. The split pulled painfully when he spoke, ate, or so much as wet his lips. He felt a drop of blood roll down his mouth.

Sighing with exhaustion, Ryuo left the female slave’s side and returned to Yuzuriha’s. She was lying still, eyes closed, hands on top of the covers, heart monitor beeping dully. He pulled up his usual chair and took her cold hand. After a while, his head dropped and he rested it on the space of bed next to her hip. He was almost asleep when there was a faint knock at the door and Kurogane stepped in.

“How is she?” Kurogane asked quietly and rested his hand on the back of Ryuo’s chair.

Ryuo shrugged and rubbed her icy skin. After a long moment of tense quiet, he asked, “Did you find him?”

“Yeah…”

“How is he?”

Kurogane grunted. “We won’t know until he wakes up.”

“What do you think?”

He shook his head and gazed out the window at the encroaching darkness. “I don’t know, kid. I don’t know…”

X X X

I was going to keep going, but I really want Sakura and Syaoran to be in a chapter all their own.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	22. The Reunion

Now I do have something to say! SakuraSou1307 aka Sourin drew FanArt for this chapter and it is fantastic! Please check it out! 

This is the link, just take out the spaces: http:// sourin .deviant art .com/art/for-ParadiseAvenger-169411404?q=1&qo=1

If it doesn’t work, as it tends not to, go to deviant art .com and search “ParadiseAvenger” and you can find any fanart that's ever been drawn for my stories in my profile.

X X X

Sakura woke up sometime in the early morning hours, the witching hours, and life crashed back down on her head like a thousand pounds of water. She lurched up in bed, gripping the sheets in her white-knuckled fingers. Where was her Syaoran? She was cold with fear, sweat-slick, shivering.

“Syaoran-kun?!” she shouted, voice bouncing in the darkness.

The bright fluorescent lights overhead flicked on sharply and she squinted in the sudden brightness. 

“What?” she whispered and clutched the blankets to her chest.

“Sakura-chan, it’s alright.”

Finally, her vision came back into focus and she could make out Fai’s exhausted sapphire eyes fringed by his long pale lashes. “Fai-san?” Sakura whispered and her voice came out a hoarse croak. “Where… where…?”

Fai sat down in the chair at her bedside. “You’re in the hospital, Sakura-chan,” he muttered and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Christ, what a nightmare.”

Her throat constricted and she was unable to draw enough breath into her starved lungs. “Sya-Syaoran-k-kun?” she choked out.

Fai shook his head. “I’m so sorry, Sakura-chan, but he was gone by the time Kurogane got there…”

“N-no,” Sakura gasped and tears flooded her blurry eyes. “No! No, no, no!”

She tore back the covers and flung her good leg out of the bed. Her foot hit the floor, lifted and supported her, and her limp crippled leg crashed down behind the rest of her body. Destroying her balance, Sakura smashed into the floor. A scream of pure anguish tore from her throat, echoing through the hospital.

…

Kurogane was sitting at Syaoran’s bedside, watching over the kid, protecting him from Fai should the doctor forget the Hippocratic Oath and try something. He had nodded off for a moment, chin resting on his chest, head drooped.

Suddenly, a scream tore through the hospital, bouncing against the windows and walls like a bird trapped in a room, shuddering against the glass over and over again. The sound went through Kurogane’s bones and tore through his heart. 

Syaoran lurched upright in his bed, hand flying to his own throat as if the cry was coming from him. His amber eyes were glowing in the dim moonlight, rolling wildly, and occluded with a mess of bloodshot veins His mouth opened, but no sound came out save a small keening whine.

Kurogane leaped to his feet and dashed into the hallway. There was commotion down the hall, at Sakura’s room. Between Syaoran and Sakura’s hospital rooms lay Yuzuriha’s and the female slave whose mouth had been sewn shut. Ryuo was already out in the hall, looking confused and distressed. 

“Kurogane-san,” was all the dragon boy was able to say before turning his face toward the bedlam at Sakura’s room. 

Her scream was still going on.

“Watch the kid,” Kurogane shouted to Ryuo. Then, he tore down the hallway like a bat out of Hell. He exploded into Sakura’s room and was immediately crippled by the sight that awaited him.

Sakura was one the floor, crippled leg twisted behind her in the fall from her bed. Her good leg was weakly pushing against the furniture, trying to propel her forward. She was scrawling, digging her bloodied fingers into the linoleum, tearing apart her ragged nails. Blood smeared on the floor from her hands as she scrabbled at the smooth floor. Her jade-green eyes were dark and barred, streaming with bloody tears. She was sobbing and continuously screaming, a horrible endless wail, as she crawled.

Fai was standing from his fallen chair, hands clamped over his ears. The doctor’s blue eyes were squeezed shut and streaming with tears. 

“Sakura?!” Kurogane shouted. He grabbed her under her armpits and dragged her to her feet. 

She was like a ragdoll in his hands and cold, so terribly cold.

“What is it?!” he shouted at her. “What’s wrong?!” 

Her eyes looked through him, saw something otherworldly, something else. She continued screaming and her bloody fingers dug into his wrists. Her crippled leg hung limp beneath her, but the toes of her good leg twitched and reached. 

“What happened?!” Kurogane demanded. Nurses were coming in behind him, armed with sedatives and medication, so he did the only thing he could think to do. He shook her fiercely, whipping her head back and forth. Her scream rattled in her chest, but quieted.

Fai began to lower his hands from his ears and his eyes slid open.

“What is it?!” Kurogane demanded of Sakura.

Her face shattered into a mask of broken pieces and she clutched Kurogane’s arms tightly with pure agony. “My Syao…” she gasped and sobbed. “My Syao… gone… all gone…” 

“What?” Kurogane asked, his brow wrinkling. “What about the kid?”

Sakura’s head dropped and her entire body was slack and limp. “My Syaoran… dead… killed… murdered… gone… My Syao…” she whispered.

“What? The kid is right down the hall. He’s fine.” Kurogane told her.

Her head snapped up and stared through him again. There was light in her far-seeing eyes. “Alive?”

Kurogane nodded. “Did you have a dream…?” Suddenly, a thought came to him and he turned his enraged blood-colored eyes to Fai, the embodiment of Wrath. Fai was on his knees, sobbing into his long white hands. “You didn’t…?” he snarled.

Fai could only nod. 

Nothing was worse than this…

…

Sakura was sitting in a wheelchair, gripping the side tightly with the hand that wasn’t being bandaged. Her fingers were torn apart, nails ripped out, flesh peeled back, blood streaming down her skinny arms. Again, she tried to pull her hand away and asked, “When can I see Syaoran-kun?”

“In a little bit,” Kurogane repeated. He was sitting at her side, holding the wheel of her chair to prevent her from rolling away on them. “Let’s just get you bandaged up, okay, kid?”

“But I want to see Syaoran-kun.”

“In a little bit.”

“But–”

“Just wait, kid. In a little bit…”

“Alright, she’s done,” the EMT said and cut the tape he had been using to secure the gauze around her fingertips. 

Sakura immediately gripped the wheels and tried to roll away. When Kurogane continued to hold her back, she launched herself from the chair and hit the floor with a loud slap of flesh on linoleum. The EMT dragged her up and sat her back in the chair.

“Now, hold on a minute!” Kurogane snapped. The image of the words carved into the young man’s tender flesh returned to his mind: SLAVE and SAKURA’S FAULT. 

He decided not to tell her…

“Nothing, never mind,” Kurogane said. “Go ahead.”

Sakura once again looked through him as the white rectangle of light that was the hospital hallway. She grabbed the wheels and propelled herself down the hall at a breakneck pace to Syaoran’s room. Her feet knocked into the closed door and she groped at the handle before Ryuo pulled it open for her from the inside. He didn’t say anything to her, just let her pass, and left them alone.

Sakura approached the bed, approached the silhouette of the young man who had been willing to sacrifice his very life for her, his very broken soul.

…

Fai was waiting in Sakura’s hospital room, slumped against her bed on the floor with his head between his knees. He was weeping and there was a spreading puddle of tears on the floor between his bent legs. When Kurogane entered, he heaved in a deep shuddering gasp of cold air.

“Why?” Kurogane growled.

Fai whimpered, croaking and gasping.

Kurogane closed the space between them and hauled Fai up by the collar of his scrubs. Like he had done to Sakura, he shook Fai roughly, snapping his blonde head back and forth. 

“Tell me why you did it?” he snarled.

Fai shuddered in Kurogane’s hands. “I thought it was…”

“Was what? What could you possibly think?”

Fai sobbed and pushed weakly at Kurogane, trying to escape the onslaught. “They can’t…”

Kurogane shook him harder, fiercer, viciously.

“They can’t be together, Kurogane. They can’t be together…”

“What?!”

“I thought it was better that he dies here…”

“You were going to kill him?!”

Fai nodded weakly and sobbed. His face was awash with tears. “Sakura-chan…”

Kurogane dropped Fai and the doctor slammed into the floor with a deafening crash. 

“Get out,” Kurogane snarled.

Fai looked up at him with teary red-rimmed eyes. 

“Get out,” he repeated.

But it wasn’t Fai that left, it was Kurogane. He returned to Syaoran’s room and sat quietly outside the door. 

When Fai ran past him, his blue eyes were down.

…

Now, Sakura approached the damaged silhouette of her beautiful sex slave, sitting up in his hospital bed. His lower body was covered with the thin white hospital blanket and his free hand was fisted in the covers. He was shirtless, pale flesh gleaming in the moonlight, chiaroscuro with shadows cast by his jutting bones. 

There was a pad of gauze taped across his belly and his upper back, seeped through with black-red blood, hiding the words carved into him that Sakura didn’t know existed. The bullet wounds, through and through, in his chest were covered with simple Band-Aids. The joint of his shoulder was wrapped thick and tight with gauze and his arm was pinned in a sling against his chest. His pale skin was traced with paper-thin patterns and the ones at his joints, his waist and elbows and across his collarbones had been covered with sterile gauze. A pad of gauze had been taped over his heart.

There was a huge gash at the corner of his jaw, thick with blood and painful looking. A pad of bloodied gauze lie in his lap, most likely from that gash since it didn’t look like the kind of wound EMTs would leave uncovered to heal on its own. The split in his mouth was pulled open, dark blood ran down his throat. The rest of his face was perfect and silver-moon-pale and beautiful. 

“Sy-Syaoran-kun…” Sakura whispered and hesitantly put her fingers on the cold side bar of the bed.

His chalky-pale face showed absolutely no recognition. He didn’t so much as blink.

“Syaoran-kun?” Sakura croaked and reached to touch his hand. Her fingers touched the back of his hand and he didn’t try to draw away but he didn’t accept her touch either. He just sat there, stone-still, staring straight ahead at the wall, like a statue, like he was dead. “Syaoran-kun, will you look at me, please?”

He still didn’t move.

Sakura wrapped her fingers around his wrist and lifted his hand to cradle it against her face. He still showed no recognition or response to her touch. She touched his face, turning it gently to face her. For a moment, his amber eyes glowed in the dark and then they rolled up in his head. 

He wouldn’t look at her.

It was just like the first time she had seen him, up on that auction stage being manhandled so cruelly with his eyes rolling back in his head when the auctioneer tried to raise his eyes to the assembled crowd.

“Oh God, please, no,” Sakura whispered. “Syaoran-kun, please, look at me.” 

His eyes remained rolled, only the whites showing, with his mouth pressed into a thin bloody line. His shoulders tightened, but he made no other move against her touch. He was shattered into a million pieces, shards and shards of sparkling soul.

Tears welled up in Sakura’s eyes and she stopped touching him. She sobbed into her long-fingered hands. Strands of caramel hair plastered to her cheeks with moisture. Slumping deeper into her wheelchair, Sakura’s mind whirled with terrible thoughts.

“No, please, no,” she sobbed and reached for him in the dark moonlight. 

He didn’t reach for her as he once would have. He just sat there, stock-still, frozen.

Gone.

Her Syaoran was gone, dead.

In his place was the damaged shattered destroyed abused broken sex slave. 

Something in Sakura’s heart broke. She suddenly felt that her Syaoran would never return. 

Fai had been right…

Her Syaoran was dead. They hadn’t been in time to save him.

X X X

There you go. Sakura and Syaoran meet again.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	23. Her Animal

Questions, comments, concerns?

X X X

Sakura and Syaoran remained in the hospital for another two days before returning home. Syaoran… showed no improvement. His wounds slowly healed, but something inside of him was still completely shattered. Sakura stared at Fai with a mixture of sorrow, love, and a degree of distrust. 

Kurogane watched the blonde with only rage. How could Fai have even thought to do that to the kid and the girl? But he had stopped speaking to Fai and therefore would not ask.  
Ryuo remained with Yuzuriha in the hospital, waiting, hoping, praying. Every day he chased the Reaper from her bedside as, like Syaoran, she showed no improvement. But, every so often, crystal tears leaked from her closed eyes.

Life rolled on.

…

The house was dark and cool and quiet. 

Sakura limped into the foyer, pulling back the hood of her raincoat. The exposed ends of her caramel hair were soaked with rain just from the short walk from the car to the porch. She wrung water from her locks with the tips of her fingers and pulled off her coat to drip in the hall closet. 

Syaoran was standing on the porch behind her, waiting for invitation into the house and staring at the floor. He had reverted to what he had been like before, broken, shattered, tormented. He had even stopped responding to his beautiful name…

Sakura wet her lips and then bit softly on her lower on to work up her courage. “S-slave, come inside.”

Immediately, he obeyed.

“Would you like some dinner?” Sakura asked as she closed the door and dragged her leg behind her in exhaustion as she made her way into the kitchen. 

“No, master,” he said hollowly.

A lump welled up in Sakura’s throat. “Please, tell me the truth, are you hungry?”

“No, master.” Hollow instant answers and always “No, master” no matter what she asked him.

She felt like crying but choked the urge down.

Hell, the Syaoran she had initially brought home had been broken and frightened but the creature she had now was worse than that. He was a shell, a shade, a ghost. No, not even that. He was just… he was just a slave, a sex slave. Her sex slave.

Sakura still didn’t know about the words carved into him. 

She didn’t know what had happened to him.

She didn’t know anything.

Biting her lip, she limped into the kitchen and began rattling through the fridge. She had been gone a long time and most of the stuff in the fridge and out on the counters had spoiled. The milk was sour, the bread was moldy, the apples she had left out on top of the microwave were wrinkled and soft, the bananas were dark brown, and leftovers were rotten. She dumped nearly the entire contents of the fridge into the trash, knotted the bag, and put in a fresh one. 

She asked Syaoran to put the trash outside the front door to be taken out at when the rain stopped and he did wordlessly. 

With little to work with, Sakura made scrambled eggs and smothered them in cheese and salsa. She prepared two plates and two tall tumblers of water, splashing a bit of rum into Syaoran’s, maybe the alcohol would help him relax and return to the way he was. 

“Here, come sit down,” she murmured.

He didn’t move, didn’t react, didn’t look up. Nothing.

She wet her lips again and whispered, “Slave, come here. Sit down and eat.”

Only then did he finally move. He slipped into the seat next to her and stared at his plate.

“Drink,” Sakura whispered.

He lifted the tumbler, sipped it, coughed, and then drained the cup. He set it down with a clunk and coughed into his hands. Tears leaked from his eyes, running down his cheeks, and she saw blood on his hands.

“Eat,” she whispered.

He cleaned his plate in seconds, starving, famished, emaciated, but not admitting it… never admitting it.

Sakura couldn’t eat. Her stomach clenched and seized, making her nauseous and light-headed. She just drank her water in slow little sips and tried to calm her racing heart. She gave Syaoran her plate of food, but had to order him to eat it. 

Then, as she was clearing the table, he finally spoke without invitation, but what came from his mouth both shocked and disturbed Sakura.

“Master…?”

Her heart leaped into her throat with joy. He had spoken! “Yes?” she said cheerfully and placed the stacked dishes in the sink.

“Hurt me…” he said.

“W-what?!” Sakura shrieked incredulously. She had to grip the counter to steady herself and even then her legs threatened to buckle beneath her. Syaoran was standing very close to her, so close she could feel the heat coming off his body. His face was downcast and chalky-pale.

“Hurt me. Beat me. Abuse me, please,” he begged. “Hurt me!”

She put out her hands to ward him off as he stepped closer and her hands pressed into his chest. He jolted and she could feel his heart racing. He was terrified yet he was still begging to be mistreated. His lips trembled as he spoke, begged, pleaded.

“Syaoran, w-why would you say that?” she whispered and cupped his face in her hands. She tried to raise his chin, to encourage him to look at her, and his eyes rolled back in his head. “Please, talk to me. Why are you acting this way?”

He shivered, shuddered, trembled, but continued begging. “Please, master, hurt me. Whip me. Starve me,” he whispered. Then, with violently trembling hands, he touched her. He touched her. He laid his hands on her shoulders and she felt the chill of his skin seeping through her clothing. “I’m touching you,” he whispered. “Punish me!”

Sakura slammed her hands against his chest, shoving him away from her, and as he stumbled backwards into the wall, she collapsed in a heap against the cabinets. 

Sobbing, Sakura hid her face in her long-fingered hands. 

In front of her, slumped against the wall, Syaoran cried out.

She lowered her hands and looked at him.

There was blood seeping through his shirt, words leaching through the white fabric. She could make out a smudged S and stared, transfixed, as other letters filtered through the whiteness. SLAVE. A scream crawled up her throat and she had to press her hands over her mouth to prevent it from escaping.

“Oh god,” she whispered. 

Raitei had done it! He must have done it or else Syaoran carved the words into himself. Raitei wasn’t satisfied with just tearing apart Sakura’s body. He had to torture her beautiful broken Syaoran, carved that horrible word into the soft flesh of his lower stomach.

Sickened, Sakura crawled toward him on the floor, slithering on her belly. Syaoran’s eyes were glowing, staring at the floor, bloodshot. She slid up his legs, crawling practically into his lap, and he grew cold and stiff with fear. Her fingers dug beneath his shirt and pulled it up. Through the gauze, the letters were dark and bloody and she peeled that barrier back as well. She saw the muscles of his stomach tense and ripple, growing thin and defined with dark blue veins beneath his white translucent skin. SLAVE was carved there, thick and blocky. His dark blood wet the waistband of his jeans and was still seeping through the opened wounds.

“I’m so sorry, Syaoran. How could he do that to you?!”

Syaoran shivered. “Please, hurt me,” he whispered and gripped her hand where it was lying on his thigh. He guided it to his stomach, gripped one finger, and gouged it into the letter S.

“Stop! Stop it, Syaoran!” Sakura screamed and curled her fingers into a fist that couldn’t damage his flesh to easily. She tried to pull away. “Stop hurting yourself!”

He shoved her fist against his wound, still trying to tear himself apart. 

Sakura couldn’t think of any way to stop him. She couldn’t think at all.

She pressed herself against him, crushing their hands between her ribcage and his wounded stomach. She embraced him, holding him, with her free arm. She threaded her fingers through the warmth of his hair and held his face against the side of her neck. His mouth opened, teeth hesitating against her pulse. Would he bite her?

“Please, Syaoran,” she whispered. “Stop, just stop.”

He let out a shuddering breath and then leaned hard into her. She heard him sob and his heart thundered behind his ribs like a caged animal trying to escape.

“Please, master, hurt me… I’m your animal… your little animal… Punish me… do whatever you want to me… just don’t…” he whimpered.

“Don’t what?” Sakura sobbed and hugged him tighter against herself.

“…Please, just don’t… use me…”

X X X

I wanted to keep going, but to tell the truth I don’t really know what I’m doing right now and I don’t want to get to far ahead of myself if I have no idea what I’m doing. I might step on my tongue and prevent future events. So, I’m posting this since I really like it and don’t think it with hurt anything when I finally decide what I’m doing. 

Next chapter might be a few more days. Sorry. Try to deal with it.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	24. The Hands

Yay! Fanart!

X X X

_"…Please, just don't… use me…"_

Syaoran’s terrified broken words sliced through Sakura’s heart like a thousand needles of ice. Agony that was as biting as poisonous venom ran through her veins, searing her vital organs. She felt as if her heart was about to stop from the anguish. 

“Use you…?” she whispered and gripped his hair tightly in her fingers.

His mouth was hot, open, breathing hard against her throat. His tongue darted out and tasted the sweat on her skin. Then, he pulled back, pushing against her hands. “Make me your animal,” he whispered. “Just please… keep me…”

Sakura’s throat clenched. She cupped his face, tried to lift his chin, but he kept his eyes closed. “Syaoran, please, look at me,” she begged. 

She watched his eyelids flutter, hesitate, and then squeeze tightly shut again.

“Syaoran, please, tell me what that bastard did to you. Look at me…” she pleaded.

Syaoran shook his head, almost breaking free of the hold she had on his face, but not quite. A small choked sound issued from his throat and he wet his lips nervously. Sakura pressed close to him, resting her warm cheek against the cold clamminess of his. She hummed low in her chest, soothingly, like a lullaby. He started to relax, pressing hard against her as if going limp. 

“Please… don’t…” he croaked.

“I won’t. I would never. Please, Syaoran-kun,” she whispered. “Talk to me… Look at me… please!”

Syaoran moved, turning his head. His lips touched her throat again, feathered there lightly. His teeth grazed her pounding pulse, nipped lightly. “I’ll be your animal,” he whispered. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll be anything for you, just please…”

Sakura gripped his trembling body tightly against hers. “Syaoran-kun…”

Something damp touched her skin: tears, Syaoran’s tears…

She gripped his shoulders tightly and shoved him back from her. His head snapped about on his neck, eyes rolling to show the blood-occluded whites. A drop of blood rolled form the corner of his slightly parted lips and his tongue snaked out to catch it.

Sakura’s jade-eyes welled with crystal tears.

Suddenly, without thinking, she leaned toward him. Her breath teased his face, teased his lips, and fluttered the tendrils of his messy chocolate locks. His eyes flickered and cracked open, showing a slit of glow-in-the-dark amber. For one instant, their eyes met and held. Then, Syaoran’s eyes closed again and he almost looked to be bracing himself for something.

Sakura’s feather-soft petal-pink lips grazed the corner of his mouth and his mouth opened as if to devour her, but only words came out.

“Please, do whatever you want with me… take me,” he whimpered. “I’m yours.”

An anguished moan issued from Sakura’s chest. “Syaoran-kun, please, stop saying that. You’re not just a slave to me. You’re so much more,” she whispered. “We’re friends, remember? Do you remember when I told you that?”

“I’m yours…” he whispered, but she cut him off. She pressed her lips to the corner of his mouth in a partial kiss. Syaoran started, jolting as if struck, and tore his lips from hers. Sakura cupped the back of his head and rested their foreheads together.

Syaoran’s amber eyes were wide open, staring directly into hers. She felt her lips curve into a smile.

“Please, Syaoran-kun,” she murmured and leaned in toward him again. She felt his trembling hands on her waist and then ghosting up her back to rest on her shoulders. He twisted his fingertips in the ends of her caramel locks. She pressed her cheek against his. “I know you’re hurt, but… I really want you, no… Syaoran-kun, I need you to trust me again,” she whispered.

He took her hand and pressed it to his lower abdomen. She felt the bumps of scabs and wet-hot rivulets of blood weeping from the letters carved into him. 

“I’m sorry,” Sakura whispered. “I’m so sorry…” she sobbed. “It’s all my fault.”

Syaoran jolted, his entire body going ramrod straight.

“Syaoran-kun, what’s wrong?” Sakura whispered.

He pushed her back at arm’s length and lowered his eyes. Then, he grasped the lower hem of his shirt and began peeling it over his head. SLAVE became bared in all its horrible glory, thick with dried blood. His chest was chiseled and defined, beautifully porcelain-pale, and spattered with pearl-white scars that were nearly invisible on such white skin. The patch of gauze over his heart was pink in places and Sakura now knew that the flesh beneath was skinned to the bone. He gripped his shirt in his hands, tightly, in white knuckles and held it in his lap. 

“What is it?” Sakura whispered. Her fingertips itched to touch him and she even reached out, but hesitated because he shivered. Slowly, cautiously, he turned his shoulders and showed her the sinuous curve of his back.

SAKURA’S FAULT was carved there, thick and bloody and raw.

Her blood turned to ice in her veins and her hands flew to her mouth with a sharp painful gasp. “No,” she whispered.

Syaoran looked into her stricken face and then dug his teeth into his lip. “No, please,” he whimpered. “Do anything you want to me… just don’t…” 

“Oh god,” Sakura whispered. “What did he do to you…? Syaoran-kun, I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head and clutched his shirt to his chest. “Just don’t… please, don’t… use me…” 

Sakura wrapped her arms tightly around Syaoran’s waist and hugged him hard against her soft body. She felt the words carved into his flesh beneath her sweaty palms and he hissed at the burn of the salt in his blood. She cupped his face, curled her fingers around the curve of his jaw, ran her hands through his hair, and sobbed.

Syaoran’s eyes slid shut and he trembled like a broken bird in her hands.

“Please, tell me what happened. What did he do to you?” Sakura begged, but Syaoran said nothing.

When she tried to raise his head, his eyes rolled back and he made no sound of protest even though he was clearly traumatized. He clutched his hands and his shirt to his naked chest. Once again, he had closed himself off from her behind a wall of silence.

…

Night fell pitch black and cold. The sky was blanketed in a thick layer of storm clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance and lightning flared close by. The wind gusted through the eaves and the forest occasionally. Outside, night birds cried and screamed.

Sakura peeked into Syaoran’s room through the half-open door. His bed was still neatly made and windows tightly shut. The open bathroom was dark and the closet was closed. There was no sign of him. The room was completely deserted, empty.

“Syaoran-kun?” she called.

Immediately, he jolted up into view. He must have been lying on the floor on the other side of the bed, hidden by the dust ruffle.

“Are you sleeping on the floor?”

“Yes, Master, if it pleases you,” he whispered.

Sakura sighed heavily and limped into the room. She perched on the edge of his bed and patted the space next to her. “Here, sit, please,” she said.

He shuffled nervously from foot to foot and then perched delicately on the space beside her. Once he was beside her and Sakura could feel the heat coming off of his emaciated body, she forgot everything she was going to say to him. Helplessly, hopelessly, her mouth opened and closed.

“Syaoran-kun, this is your room,” she murmured. 

Silence dragged on between them. 

Sighing, Sakura stood up and made her way back towards the door. “Goodnight, Syaoran-kun. Sleep well,” she murmured.

“M-master?”

Her heart jumped into her chest. “Yes?”

“Why…? Why do you still… call me by that name?”

“It’s your name,” she said.

“But…”

“Syaoran-kun,” she whispered. 

“Master, you give me such a wonderful name… and this room… w-why?”

Sakura sighed. “I want you to feel comfortable, safe, content… I want this to be your home. I want you to be happy here… with me…”

He bit his lip. “But… I’m a… I’m your… slave,” he whispered.

Sakura shook her head and turned around to face him. “What does that have to do with anything?” she asked darkly.

His head snapped up and for an instant their eyes met before he squeezed his eyes shut. Sakura waited, but he didn’t say anything else. Silently, she limped from the room and closed the door slightly behind herself, leaving it cracked. For a long moment, she waited and then peaked through the crack. 

Syaoran was sitting on the bed, staring at his battered hands, looking pale. Finally, he looked at the pillows and then glanced at the door, not seeing Sakura where she was tucked in the shadows on the hallway. Then, he lay back against the pillows and turned off the lamp.

Only then did Sakura return to her own room.

…

Sometime between the hours of two and three in the morning, Sakura heard a small mewling whimper coming from somewhere deep in the house. She jockeyed herself into her wheelchair, got a small penlight from her night table drawer, and rolled from her room. The sound was coming from Syaoran’s room. He was crying out in his sleep, attacked by nightmares.

She nudged the door open with her foot and rolled in. Then, she hoisted herself onto the edge of his bed. His face was a faint lighted shape in the darkness broke only by the little penlight. Sakura put her fingers into the cool of his hair and he immediately started awake with a whimper of agony.

“Shh, shh,” she whispered. “It’s okay, Syaoran-kun. I’ll stay here, like this, until you fall asleep.”

“You don’t–”

“Fai-san used to do this for me when I was too afraid to sleep,” she said quietly. “I would manage to feel safe and fall asleep with someone touching my head like this.”

He turned in the bed slightly, gazing up at her with his glow-in-the-dark amber eyes. Then, ashamed, he turned his head away and lowered his lashes over his eyes. She continued stroking her fingers through his hair, gently, gently.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “If you have a place where you can feel safe, then you’ll be okay, even if bad things happen.”

That night, he managed to sleep with only the memory of Sakura’s warm hands threaded through his hair, touching him gently.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	25. Using Him

Hmm?

SakuraSou1307 aka Sourin drew FanArt for this chapter and it is fantastic! Please check it out! This is the link: http:// sourin .deviant art.com/art/for-ParadiseAvenger-169411404?q=1&qo=1

If it doesn’t work, as it tends not to, go to deviant art .com and search “ParadiseAvenger” and you can find all the fanart in my profile.

X X X

The morning dawned sunny and clear. There was no sign of rain on the horizon and not a cloud in the sky. The storm must have blown over some time during the long black night. The birds were singing, chirping joyously, as if to proclaim the silver lining of the dark storm they had been struggling through.

Sakura woke up with sunlight streaming in on her face, piercing through her eyelids. 

She groaned and stretched. Her hand touched something warm and firm, something that shifted and whimpered at her touch. 

Immediately, her eyes shot open and she lurched upright.

Syaoran was asleep beside her, curled on his side. His shirt had ridden up during the night, exposing the concave white curve of his stomach. SLAVE was angry and red there, standing out against the white flesh. It was pink and healing at the edges. The sharp jut of his hip stabbed out like the blade of a knife that was caught beneath his translucent skin. Hesitantly, she cupped that sharp stabbing bone and he was so blissfully warm in her hands. 

He cried quietly in his sleep.

Again, she lay down beside him, spooning along the curvature of his lithe back. She draped her arm over his waist, gently brushing her fingers over the ridge of a scar she found on his exposed belly. He moaned in his dreams and arched his back against her. 

She buried her face between his shoulder blades and inhaled deeply the scent of his skin. He smelled of blood and hospital antiseptic and soil. Sakura pressed her face into the soft pillow and brought her other hand to cup the back of his head. She threaded her fingers through his soft chocolate locks, rubbing his scalp gently, and he pushed his head into her hand.

There was blood on the back of his shirt, showing darkly through the thin grey fabric of his pajamas, illuminating the words carved into his soft flesh beneath. 

SAKURA’S FAULT

“Syaoran-kun,” she whispered and tears pricked her eyes. Untangling her finger from his hair, she tugged the neck of his shirt down to reveal the junction of his neck and shoulder, part of his sinuous spine, and part of her bloody name. She feathered her lips gently against the knobs of his spine, trailing her kisses slowly and deliberately to the thundering pulse in the side of his neck. She felt goose bumps prickling beneath her lips and knew that he was listening. She pressed her palm over the naked wound in his stomach, gently touching the horrible word. She feathered her lips against the shell of his ear and whispered, “I wish you would trust me.”

His entire body tensed, hard and solid like a granite statue. His skin grew cold and then warmed again when she put some space between her lips and his damaged flesh.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I just want to take everything back.”

A shudder ran through him. 

“We were getting so close before Raitei hurt you… before he hurt me… That bastard hurt both of us. Now, I feel as if you’ll never come back to me… I feel like I’ve lost you and I just want you to come back… please, Syaoran-kun, come back to me. Please, I’m so sorry…”

“You… You’d want me? You still… want me?” he whispered. 

She felt his words rattling in his chest, fearful and timid. She traced the scar on his stomach gently and goose bumps rose beneath her fingertips. He shuddered in her hands like a broken bird.

“Yes,” Sakura whispered. “Did you think you being hurt would change that?”

He shivered and put his hands over hers. His palms were rough and callused from work and his wrists were bumpy with scars from shackles.

“You sacrificed yourself for me. You took bullets for me,” Sakura whispered. “I owe you my life…”

He shook his head. “No… master,” he murmured. “Never…”

“You were prepared to die for me,” she whispered. “You suffered in his hands and that never would have happened if it wasn’t for me…” She tightened her arm around his waist and fisted her hands in the back of his shirt. “Do you want to… leave…?”

A moan of agony crawled up his throat and he shivered violently. “No, please… don’t use me… please…”

“Is that what you want, Syaoran-kun? Do you want to leave? Do you want to be away from here? Away from me?” she asked. “Please, Syaoran-kun, tell me what you want…”

“Please, don’t use… me…”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

She felt his lungs gasping and his chest heaving for breath. His heart thundered against his ribs, beating so strongly and so hard that she thought it would burst from the cage of his chest. He seemed unable to draw a deep enough breath to sustain his body.

“Syaoran-kun, why do you say that? What is it?”

“That’s what he said…”

“Raitei told you I was using you?”

Syaoran nodded weakly.

“Using you… for what?”

The young man shuddered and curled his legs tightly against his chest, pinning her hand against his stomach. He shrank until he was like a child nestled against her. His back was a fortress of craggy trembling bone pressing against her chest.

“To guard you and then, once he was gone, for my… body…”

Hot bile rushed up the back of Sakura’s throat, burning like poison. The thought of forcing herself on Syaoran was sick, disgusting, horrible, and for her unthinkable. But it was exactly the thing Raitei would say to torment him.

“Oh god, Syaoran-kun, no…” Sakura whispered. She tried to sit up, to face him, to look into his eyes as she spoke, but his grip on her hand was too tight and she couldn’t get free. “Syaoran-kun, no. He’s a liar. I would never ever use you for… for…” she swallowed, “for sex…”

Syaoran trembled at the word, shivering like a leaf.

“Please, listen to me.”

“Why?” His question was so bitter, so sharp, that it sent a stab of pure ice through her heart.

Sakura bit her lip. “Because… I’m telling the truth…”

“I have never been told the truth,” he whispered. “All I know is lies.”

Sakura felt a stone welling up in her throat, choking her, drowning her. She was suddenly like Syaoran, unable to breathe. “But–”

“Are you different, Master? Are you different than the others? Is that what you’re going to tell me?” he hissed. His nails bit into her arm, dug deep, raked at her soft flesh.

She whimpered, “Yes…”

He shuddered, growing cold and still against her.

“Please, Syaoran-kun,” she begged. “Please, he’s a liar. I bought you because I needed you.”

“For what?”

She sobbed. “Protection…”

“You used me… as a shield…”

“No,” she cried. “I needed help, comfort, a companion, a friend…”

“No…” he moaned and shivered. His teeth chattered noisily. “No…”

“You’re afraid,” Sakura said suddenly and his shoulders tensed. “You’re afraid to trust me.” She twined her fingers through his hair and stroked his stomach with her free hand. “You trusted someone and they hurt you.” She thought of the scars on his beautiful body. “They hurt you so badly, so terribly.”

He tightened his grip on her wrist to the point where it was painful and she made a small sound of pain that was all but drowned out by his whimper of anguish. He trembled, shivered, shuddered, as if his body would break apart. This time, when she tried to sit up, he released her and curled in tightly on himself. Sakura gripped his forearms and rolled him over to face her. His eyes were squeezed shut and his face was ghostly-pale.

“Syaoran-kun,” she whispered. “Who hurt you…?”

He bit his lip, splitting the flesh so that blood swelled from the wound. 

“No, don’t!” She pressed her finger to his mouth, trying to stop him from hurting himself, but he only gnawed at the wound he had created. “Syaoran-kun, please!”

He shook his head, tearing her hand from his mouth, and unleashed an agonized moan. 

Sakura sobbed, tears prickling her eyes. 

“I have to escape this life,” he whispered and his mouth was turned down, wounded looking, painful. “I have to get away from the lies. I need to be free…”

Sakura’s blood grew hot and rushed faster through her veins. “Free?” she whispered.

It was unheard of, but maybe…?

...

In a few minutes, Syaoran had stopped crying out and dropped off into an exhausted dreamless sleep. Sakura lay against him for much longer, cradling his shivering form against her warm body. Silent tears coursed down her pale face, soaking into the ends of her hair and dampening her clothing. She sobbed quietly and kissed Syaoran’s temple before leaving the warmth of the bed they had shared through the dark night. She jockeyed herself into her wheelchair and pulled the covers around him, trapping in the warmth her body had left behind. 

Then, she rolled out of his room, went to the bathroom to splash some cool water on her burning eyes, and finally went into the kitchen. She lifted the cordless phone from its cradle and went to look out the window at the breaking dawn.

Kurogane picked up on the fifth ring, sounding grumpy and sleepy. “What?”

“Kurogane-san, it’s Sakura.”

“Is everything okay?” he asked, immediately loosing the irritated edge in his voice. Strange, usually once Kurogane was grumpy he was grumpy for hours. Such a sudden change was rare in him.

Sakura shook her head. That didn’t matter, not right now. Just like Fai telling her that Syaoran was dead in the hospital didn’t matter. “Kurogane-san, you’re a police officer, tell me…” she hesitated.

“What?”

“Is it… is it possible to free a slave?” she said finally, forcing the words out in such a rush that Kurogane almost didn’t catch it.

Once again, he said, “What?”

“Syaoran-kun,” Sakura repeated, braver now. “I want to free him.”

“From what?”

“His chains. I want to free him from slavery,” she insisted. 

She could visualize Kurogane scrubbing all vestiges of sleep from his face with his hands and he groaned. “Kid, do you have any idea what you’re getting into with this?” he asked finally.

“No,” she said quietly. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ve decided to free him and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Kurogane sighed heavily. “I don’t know, kid, I don’t know. Maybe…”

“Would you be able to look into it for me?”

“Yeah, but…” he trailed off.

“But what?” Sakura asked.

“Nothing, never mind. I’ll look into it when I get to the station in a few hours. Can you wait that long?”

Sakura nodded.

“Kid, are you nodding?”

“Oh, yes,” Sakura said and giggled.

“Alright, well, I’m going to get going. I’ll call you later when I know more,” Kurogane said.

“Alright and Kurogane-san…”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

“No problem, kid, no problem.”

Then, he hung up sharply. 

Sakura gazed out the window at the sunny sky. A robin was sitting on the railing of the porch, where Syaoran had pushed her over into the bushes below to protect her from Raitei, preening its glossy red chest feathers. She smiled and then her eyes strayed to the dark stain on the porch floorboards. 

Syaoran’s blood…

His sacrificed blood… for her sake…

“You used me… as a shield…” His voice haunted her mind.

Maybe, in a way, she had. What choice did he really have when Raitei attacked? He could have let her die and been returned to a slave auction, sold again as the worst kind of slave, sold for sex. Or he could have died protecting her and his life as that used human would have been over. There had been no choice for him then.

She had used him.

Sakura put her face against the cool of the glass and closed her eyes. Tears dripped down her cheeks, falling onto her legs. She sobbed quietly. “Oh god, strike me down,” she whispered. “I lied to him, too. I used him and I lied to him.”

Cool fingers touched the back of her neck and scarred arms slipped around her shoulders from behind. She was embraced gently, warm breath tickling through her hair along her spine. Gently, Sakura leaned back against him and laid her palm over his arm, rubbing his damaged skin tenderly with her thumb. He didn’t say anything, just held her like that for the longest moment.

“I did use you,” she whispered and her words went through him like a shiver. “I’m so sorry.”

Then, the moment was broken and Syaoran pulled away.

X X X

I could have kept going, but I really liked the way that ended. Sorry all.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	26. The Bath

Alright, I’m starting to feel inspired again. I guess I just needed a break.

SakuraSou1307 drew more fanart! It’s all for this chapter! Please check it out! 

http://sourin. deviantart.com/art/His-body-in-chains-Butterfly-170556097?q=&qo=2(His body in chains -Butterfly-)  
http://sourin. deviantart.com/art/His-body-in-chains-Hydrangea-170556543?q=&qo=1(His body in chains -Hydrangea-)  
http://sourin. deviantart.com/art/His-body-in-chains-Alone-170556862?q=&qo=0(His body in chains -Alone-)

And if that doesn’t work: find me on DeviantArt and go into my profile.

X X X

Sakura went to sit outside on the porch in the sunlight. It was a touch chilly, but she enjoyed the refreshing breeze. The air was scented with her roses and fresh cut grass and the birds were still singing beautifully. With her brace on, Sakura was free to wander through her garden, stirring butterflies from her butterfly bush or burying her face in her impossibly silver hydrangeas or breathing in the perfume of her sparkling irises or brushing the soft pollen of her stargazer lilies over her cheeks, but she did none of these things. She had erected a small cross of wood for the little creature Raitei had sent her, bloodied and dying, and looped a crown of daisies over it. Now, she had no desire to mingle with the beauty of her garden.

She felt terrible.

Syaoran’s words haunted her every thought, burning her mind like acid, and her heart constantly ached in her chest. He no longer seemed broken, but like threatened animal: angry, frightened, claws and fangs bared, but still hurting and broken. 

Worse than his haunting words was the way he had touched her, embraced her, after she got off the phone with Kurogane. She didn’t know if he had heard her talking about his freedom, but there was something desperate and terrible about the way he held her. She felt that he was going to leave, that parts of him were already disappearing as she sat there on the porch. 

Feeling ill, she leaned her head against the banister and closed her eyes.

The feeling of his arms around her, of his warm breath in her hair, of his skin beneath her fingertips, still lingered on her body. He had felt so good in her arms when she woke up, so warm and strong beside her, pressing against her. 

Sickeningly, she found herself not wanting to let him go. She didn’t want him to be free… she wanted to keep him with her forever.

That was selfish and disgusting and she shook herself to banish the thought from her mind. Keeping him, owning him… continuing to hurt him… was a sin. He deserved to be free and she wanted him to have his freedom. She wanted him to be happy for once in his life.

Sighing heavily, she opened her eyes and looked over her garden again. 

Surprisingly, Syaoran was standing among the blooms. He looked thin and pale, washed out and worn down and exhausted, and he looked hunted and threatened. She could see his eyes shifting restlessly in their sockets even as he cupped a stalk of silvery blue hydrangeas in his long-fingered hands. He deftly nipped it off the bush and lifted it to his face. For a moment, it looked as if he would inhale the scent of the flowers but he only cradled the blooms in his palms, holding them gently, tenderly.

Then, Sakura saw the butterfly. It was golden yellow and speckled with black and blue. Immediately, for an unknown reason, it reminded her of Syaoran. The butterfly flitted from the flowers around Syaoran’s head for a moment, nearly landing on him several times. Then, finally, it touched down lightly on his nose and fanned its wings across his face.

He closed his eyes and his mouth curved in a blissful smile. The butterfly remained on him for what felt like an eternity while Sakura just watched. They seemed to be sharing secrets, as if the butterfly was telling Syaoran of all the places and flowers it had visited while he told it of his pain. Then, the butterfly flew away, borne on the gentle crisp breeze. 

Syaoran gazed after it with sad honey-colored eyes. Then, he walked slowly over to where Sakura was sitting. For a moment, he hesitated in front of her, twisting the flowers around and around in his hands, but then he sat quietly beside her and continued to hold the blooms in his lap. 

Silence stretched on between them like a rubber band, tightening and tightening until it was about to burst. Sakura thought she might scream just to break the horrible silence. 

Then, the phone rang.

Syaoran jolted beside her and Sakura let out her breath in a sigh of relief. 

She picked up the phone instantly and said eagerly, “Kurogane-san?”

“Hey, kid.”

“Did you get that information I asked you for?” she asked quickly and glanced at Syaoran from the corner of her eyes. 

He was looking into his flowers and appeared to be paying no attention to her.

Kurogane sighed heavily and said, “I don’t know if you should be doing this.”

“I want to. I’ve made up my mind.”

“I know,” he sighed again. “I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop you.” He hesitated and Sakura heard him clear his throat. “Alright, he’d have to buy his freedom from you. The price would be the same as what you purchased him for: $3,000. It would have to be notarized and documented so you couldn’t just give him the money and set him free. He has to earn it…” Kurogane trailed off.

“Kurogane-san?” Sakura asked when he showed no signs of continuing. 

He growled low in his chest. “He’d have to earn the money by doing what you bought him for.”

Sakura gasped. “But he’s a…”

“Sex slave,” Kurogane finished. 

Tears welled up in Sakura’s eyes. “And it has to be notarized…”

“You’d have to be watched,” Kurogane told her.

“Oh god,” Sakura whispered. 

“I’m sorry, kid. Even if you did all that, society wouldn’t accept him. He has the scars on him and now he has those words carved right into his skin. Everyone would know he was a slave. He would be scorned and hated even free.”

“I know,” Sakura whispered. “There probably aren’t many who are free, are there?”

“No. I don’t think you should do this,” Kurogane said. 

“Kurogane-san, I have to go,” she said quietly. “Can I call you later?”

He grunted. “Yeah. Goodnight, kid.”

Sakura hung up without saying goodbye. 

Suddenly, the cheerful sky stretching on above her seemed fake and terrible. The cloudless sky was painted on with storms and lightning looming behind the crackling paint. The chirping birds felt recorded. Her flowers looked waxy, crafted to be beautiful. Her world was made-up. All of her happiness was farce. 

Beside her, Syaoran said nothing. 

She knew she would have to tell him. It would have to be his decision, but… maybe she wouldn’t tell him right now…

…

Sakura stood up uneasily and her crippled leg wobbled beneath her so that she had to grab the railing for support. Then, she limped slowly into the house, went to her room, and drew a burning hot bath. She poured rose-scented bubble bath into the water and stripped from her clothes. She wrapped her nudity in a cool silk bathrobe, laid out a bath towel, and fetched her wheelchair. She sat down in it and slipped off her brace. Then, she waited impatiently for the tub to fill.

Once the bubbles had reached the rim of the tub, she stopped the water and shucked her robe. She eased herself from her chair into the hot water, hissing and sighing in bliss as the warmth wrapped around her. She sank down in the tub, relishing the feeling of calm that washed over her as the scent of roses coiled through her skin.

Her eyes grew heavy as she soaked in the warm water, blissfully unaware of the world outside her small bathroom. She sighed and sank deep until the water was tucked neatly beneath her chin. Finally, she gave in and let her eyes slide closed.

She was asleep before she knew it.

…

There was darkness outside her window when a quiet knock interrupted her sleep. She lurched up in the lukewarm water, gasping. 

“Syaoran-kun?” she asked and crossed her arms over her breasts. “It’s alright. You can come in.”

The door eased open and Syaoran stepped silently into the bathroom with his eyes down.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything, but he did kneel quietly at the side of the tub and lay his head against the rim. He gripped the side with one hand in white knuckles and she watched his back trembling. Shaking the water from one hand, Sakura timidly reached out to him. She laid her palm on the top of his head, twisting her fingers through the cool of his hair. He made a small sound in his chest and shuddered. 

Sakura withdrew her hand immediately, but he whispered, “No…”

“What is it?” she asked and tried to move some bubbles around her naked body.

“Please, will you… just…” he made a small desperate sound.

Sakura touched his clenched fingers where they gripped the side of the tub. His knuckles relaxed beneath her skin.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Touch you?” Sakura asked quietly.

He nodded weakly.

She pressed her naked breasts into the cold porcelain side of the tub and wrapped both damp arms around Syaoran’s trembling back. He made a small quiet sound and lifted his head enough to press the cool of his cheek against her heated throat. 

“I… heard you talking to him…”

Sakura’s heart clenched tightly in her chest. “To Kurogane-san?” she forced out and tried to sound nonchalant.

He nodded once. “We you… talking about me…?”

Sakura wet her lips and rested her cheek on the top of his head. “Syaoran-kun, do you really want to be free?”

He words rattled through him and she heard his teeth grind. Then, finally, he whispered, “Yes.”

She shuddered. “Then, you have to buy your freedom from me… I don’t want you to have to do that. I just want to let you go,” she murmured. “But there are laws. You have to buy it from me by doing what you were bought for.”

“Sex?” he croaked.

She nodded and tears leaked from her eyes. “I’m so sorry.” She drew a deep breath into her parched lungs. “And it has to be notarized and documented so we’d… you’d… have to be watched.” She swallowed with difficulty. “And even then, you have the scars on you… that word carved into your stomach… People would always know what you used to be. They still wouldn’t accept you,” she said quietly. 

He was silent.

She hugged him tightly and breathed in the scent of his hair. “I’m so sorry.”

He put his lips into the hollow of her throat. “You would set me free?” 

“Yes,” she whispered.

He pushed her back and looked directly into her eyes. There was a light way back in them and their color was deep honey-gold. “Thank you, Sakura-sama,” he said and smiled at her. It was strained and weak and not untouched by sadness, but it was a smile.

Sakura felt her own lips curving in response. “You don’t have to call me by –sama,” she whispered. “Call me Sakura-chan. Pretend you’re free…”

“Sakura-chan,” he whispered. 

His breath tickled her face, stirred her bangs. Then, his soft lips hesitantly touched her cheek in the gentlest of butterfly kisses. A small noise escaped her mouth, a sigh and a sob. Immediately, Syaoran stopped and put some space between them. There was a soft blush on his cheeks and a dark worry clouding his eyes.

“That’s the first time I ever kissed someone… willingly…” he confessed.

Sakura cupped his face and lifted his chin so that their eyes met. “It’s alright,” she murmured. “It’s alright.” 

He leaned in again, but only rested his forehead against hers. He let his breath out in a rush and slipped his hand down the interior of the tub until he touched the cooling water. “It’s cold,” he said. “You should get out, Sakura-chan.”

Wrapping her arms around her breasts again, she pushed back from him. For a long moment, Syaoran sat beside the tub, looking nowhere but her eyes. Sakura felt as if she was falling into his amber depths, drowning in his hope and his sorrow. Finally, he stood up and left the bathroom, closing the door behind himself.

Sakura got out and wrapped herself in the fluffy white towel. Then, she looked at her face in the mirror and found her hand wandering to her pink cheeks, touching the place where the feeling of Syaoran’s lips still lingered.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	27. His Choice

I love everyone! Thank you so much for all the reviews. I’m so happy!

X X X

Golden sunlight streamed through the open hospital window and a faint breeze was wafting in, stirring the ugly curtains.

Yuzuriha’s eyes fluttered, squeezed tightly shut, and finally eased open. Her vision was out of focus, full of shadows and shapes, as soft and undefined as a baby’s. She blinked several times and her eyes burned dry. Her mouth was parched and her lips felt cracked at the corners. Everything felt stiff and unused.

She made a few croaking sounds deep in her hoarse throat.

Ryuo jolted upright. He had been slumped in a chair at her bedside with his face pressed into the blankets. The tight weave now lined his face. “Yuzuriha-chan?” he whispered. “You’re awake?”

She tried to smile, but the movement hurt her face. She made a few more croaking noises.

“Hold on, Yuzuriha-chan, let me get you some water,” Ryuo said and hurried away.

Her hand suddenly felt very cold and then she realized that he had been holding it. Her chest fluttered warm and she closed her eyes again. A few moments later, warm hands buoyed up the back of her head, lifted her into the crook of an elbow, a Styrofoam cup pressed against her mouth, and the cool of water touched her lips.

“Ryuo-kun,” she croaked once her thirst was quenched. “What happened?”

“We were in an accident, after we found Sakura-chan on the road. Do you remember that?” he asked gently.

For a moment, she thought and then nodded. “Yeah. That jackass Raitei hit us coming out of Sakura-chan’s driveway. I didn’t have my seatbelt on, I was too worried, but we hit a tree,” she croaked. “God, I feel like I’ve been asleep forever.”

“It’s been more than a week,” Ryuo told her. His green eyes were sparkling, glassy with tears. 

“What is it?”

“The doctor’s said you… you wouldn’t wake up.”

Yuzuriha’s heart skipped several beats in her chest, shuddering like a small trapped animal in her chest. “Why?” she whispered.

“Your concussion,” Ryuo murmured. “They didn’t think you’d ever wake up.”

Yuzuriha wet her lips and fisted her hands weakly in the sheets. Ryuo gently, hesitantly, touched her hand and lifted it to cradle between both of his hands. His touch was warm and soft, heavenly, tender. Her eyes slid closed and she dropped deeply back off to sleep. 

Ryuo remained at her side even as she slept, but now he was at peace. 

Yuzuriha had awoken.

He knew he should have called Sakura, should have told her that her friend would live, but he could not find the strength to leave Yuzuriha’s side. He just wanted to stay with her, holding her soft cool hand through the sunny afternoon.

In the distance, storm clouds gathered.

…

Fai was at home, lying in bed and feeling poorly. The bright beautiful day outside his window did little to improve his mood. He wanted to sulk and feel sorry for himself, but the golden rays of sun and cloudless sky made loafing difficult.

The phone rang just as he was falling asleep. He answered with a groggy, “Hello?”

“Fai, it’s Kurogane. We need to talk.”

His stomach did an unpleasant little flip. “About what, Kuro-pon?” he asked with forced nonchalance. 

“You know damn well what,” Kurogane snapped. “Get your ass out here. I’m on the porch.”

“Alright, alright,” Fai said and hung up the phone. It was tempting to just roll over and ignore Kurogane, but he knew that the policeman was impatient on a good day. He would surely break down the door and drag Fai outside regardless of whether he wanted to go or not. So, sighing, Fai got out of bed, pulled on some jeans, and went outside to face Kurogane.

He pulled open his front door and squinted in the brightness of daylight. Kurogane was a dark shadow leaning against the space beside the door, looking gloomy and irritated. Fai closed the door quietly and leaned opposite Kurogane, his perfect opposite. 

“What is it?” Fai asked though he already knew the answer.

“Sakura-chan plans to free the kid,” Kurogane said flatly.

“Syaoran-kun? But that means…”

“Yeah. I told her how to do it. I had to. You know how determined she can be,” Kurogane continued.

Fai nodded. “Do you really think she’ll free him?”

“She’ll make it his choice, I suppose.”

“Do you think…?”

“I’d want to be free if I was him,” Kurogane said.

Fai sighed.

“You were right, you know…”

“Huh?”

“It would have been better if the kid died in Raitei’s hands.”

Abruptly, Fai felt nauseous. “But…”

Kurogane shook his head. “Then again, maybe it’s better to let them choose their own paths.”

Fai nodded and looked out on the cloudless horizon. “Maybe this beautiful day is a sign.”

“Maybe it is.”

Then, in unison, they both said, “I hope this works out for the best.” 

But, as it was, it could go either way. 

Syaoran may have been better off dead than given a hope that would be torn away from him or freed only to be destroyed and scorned by a close-minded society. Sakura may have been better off dead at Raitei’s hands, having never bought Syaoran. But, they may be best in each other’s arms. Maybe Syaoran would be free and Sakura would protect him from society by wrapping him in the safety of her wonderful friends. 

It could go either way.

…

Syaoran was sitting at the window in his room, looking out on the falling twilight. During the day, it was easier to ignore the aching want in his heart. His freedom was inches from his grasp but surrounded by a patch of biting briars that he was loathe to put his hands into. If he succeeded, sold himself to his master, to Sakura, for his freedom, then his body would truly belong to him. If he succeeded, society would tear him apart with the teeth of their hatred. If he failed, he would remain a used and beaten slave of the worst kind, a sex slave.

He put his palm against the warm polished sill and rested his face on the cool glass. His eyes were heavy and slid closed.

Outside, the dark blue-violet of twilight was descending upon the world. Bright diamond stars winked into view in the sky. Polaris, the brilliant North Star, shone first. 

He had always loved the sky and had memorized many constellations when he worked as a field slave before sex. Sometimes, when he lay outside the slave quarters at night, choosing to sleep there rather than inside because of the stink of sex or blood or piss that made him sick to his stomach, he would fall asleep staring into the wide depths of the sky. Most of the time, it was a comfort to him, but occasionally it just made him feel smaller and more insignificant. 

Tonight was one of those nights. The beautiful endlessness of the sky made him sick. With the sky as big and stretching as it was, who was he to beg to make a difference.

Shivering, he stepped away from the window, escaping the wondrous night. 

He thought again of his freedom, dangling before him on a sinuous breakable thread.

…

Sakura sat up on her cool crisp sheets and used her hands to lift her crippled leg from beneath the covers. She crammed her bare feet into her sneakers and then slipped her naked leg into her cold brace. She tightened the buckles against her scarred flesh. She left her room quietly, trying not to drag her leg. Syaoran was in his room, maybe sleeping, maybe not, but she did not want to disturb him either way.

She drew a tumbler of cold water and drained it in a single swallow. She refilled the glass and went to sit at the kitchen table. Seated, she stretched out her leg on the chair beside her and then put her face in her long-fingered hands. Tears burned her eyes, stinging behind her lids and starring her lashes.

Outside, the night seemed very dark and rather threatening.

A cool breeze kissed her skin from the open window and she shivered with cold in her thin night clothes. She laid her head down on the table and closed her eyes. 

Warm hands touched her shoulders hesitantly and fingers tangled in the ends of her hair. 

“Sakura-chan,” Syaoran whispered quietly.

She groaned and sat up, pushing her shoulders into his hands. “Syaoran-kun?”

He withdrew his hands and clenched them in his shirt. She turned to face him, looking up into his glow-in-the-dark amber eyes. He chewed his lip, lowering his eyes, looking nervous. Sakura reached for him, touched the backs of his hands gently, and then pulled away.

“What is it?” she asked him.

He wet his lips, worrying the cut on his mouth. 

“Syaoran-kun? Come on, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“Sakura-chan, I… I…” he began desperately. 

Sakura waited, not speaking, worrying her fingers together. 

Finally, he sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there was heartbreaking nervousness and deep glowing hope. “Sakura-chan, I… I’ve wanted nothing more than to be free… I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my entire wretched life…” His voice cracked and he took a long moment trying to get it back. “Will you…? Would you…?” Again, he paused, croaking. “Please…”

Sakura’s breath caught in her throat and had to struggle to catch it again.

Syaoran was looking at her desperately, fearful and hopeful. 

Finally, she managed to find her voice again where it was lost somewhere in her chest. All she could murmur was, “…yes…”

Beside her, Syaoran slumped to the floor.

X X X

Kind of a filler chapter. 

I needed to wake Yuzuriha up, make Fai and Kurogane get along again, and give everyone Syaoran’s decision. So, with that out of the way…

Next chapter… dun dun dun!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	28. The Payment for Freedom

Alright, I’m not sure if this chapter is going to wind up being kind of creepy or really sweet or what, so stick with it! 

I was going to make the notary guy, the guy who has to watch Sakura and Syaoran, really mean, but I figured that would just make this situation harder to get through. So, I decided to make him nice and not judgmental. 

So, try to be like him as you read.

X X X

Now, the man who would notarize Syaoran’s payment to Sakura was waiting on the other side of the door. She had called Kurogane and arranged everything yesterday. He and Fai had valiantly tried to talk her out of what she was about to do, but the honest hope and fear in Syaoran’s amber eyes prevented her from so much as thinking about backing out. 

His freedom was only inches away, moments away.

His dream was almost a reality. 

Strangely, even though he was willingly about to give himself to someone for the very first time, he was terrified. 

Sakura was wearing her favorite silk bathrobe with her laundry day bra and cotton panties on beneath it and sitting in her wheelchair so as not to have to deal with her brace when the time… for payment… came. Syaoran had managed to stop shaking long enough to pull low-slung jeans over his naked lower half. Gauze pads covered the words—SAKURA’S FAULT and SLAVE—that were carved into his torso. When Sakura laid eyes on him when he finally slinked out of his bedroom, she had been unable to tear her eyes from his finely sculpted chest. 

Wetting her lips nervously, she pulled open the door and allowed the man in. He was very tall and thin with pale skin stretched over the aristocratic bones of his face. His eyes were periwinkle blue and cheerful and he had deep dimples in his cheek when he smiled, but his face was so lean that the dimples looked more like lines.

“Hello,” Sakura said and her voice had a little tremor in it. 

“Hi, my name is Skye and I’m the notary. So, you are the crazy young woman who is going to free her slave?” he asked. His voice was soft and kind.

Sakura forced a little tremulous laugh. “Yeah, that’s me!”

“You’re a little nervous?” Skye asked.

Sakura nodded and tears pricked at her eyes. 

Skye gave her a sparkling smile and his blue eyes disappeared in the dimples of his face. “Don’t worry. We’re going to try to make this as easy as possible,” he said kindly and shuffled several papers on a clipboard. “So, where is your slave? We need to sign some papers and then you two can, um, get down to it.”

Sakura laughed nervously and rotated her wheelchair to fetch Syaoran from where he was sitting in the living room staring at the floor. “Um, Syaoran-kun, the notary is here,” she said quietly. 

He was biting his lip and had drawn shiny crimson blood. Silently, he stood up from the couch, grasped the handles of her wheelchair, and pushed her out into the kitchen where Skye was waiting. Then, he stood at her side and listened as Skye told them what was going to happen.

“Alright, Sakura, you want to free your slave…” Skye said and made a continue gesture with his long white hand. 

“Syaoran,” Sakura supplied. “His name is Syaoran.”

Skye nodded. “You wish to free Syaoran. As he is a slave for sex, the way he must buy his freedom is by sex. He was purchased for a price of $3,000 and, Sakura, how much will you be paying him for this service of sex?”

She blinked and chewed the corner of her mouth and looked desperately at Skye. 

He smiled softly. “Will you be paying him a sum of $3,000 and then you only have to do this once? Or $1,500 in which case this must be done twice? Or any number of combinations?”

Sakura choked abruptly on her breath and Syaoran tensed beside her. They hadn’t thought of that. 

“No, no! I’m paying him once! $3,000!” she said quickly.

Syaoran let out a deep sigh of relief. 

“Alright then, I just need Sakura to sign here and initial on this line. Then, we can get started,” Skye said. 

Sakura’s hand was shaking as she scribbled her signature on the papers that gave Syaoran his life and his freedom. Her throat was tight and her mouth was dry. Her heart was hammering against her ribs and she was suddenly very aware of Syaoran’s presence behind her and the blood rushing to her nether regions. She couldn’t deny that he was beautiful and she wanted him.

She knew what had to happen next for this deal to be made and his dream to be in his grasp. She had to give him this. After using him, he deserved this one thing.

“The bedroom is this way,” Sakura said and began to roll herself from the kitchen. Skye and Syaoran followed behind her, both quiet. Syaoran was surely nervous, but desperately hoping she would go through with this, praying this was not a cruel joke. Skye sensed the tension and dared not break it until absolutely necessary. 

“I… I brought in a chair for you,” Sakura said once they were in her bedroom.

Skye nodded and sat down. “Just pretend I’m not here,” he told them. “Imagine that you are alone.” 

Sakura nodded and wet her lips. She jockeyed herself from her wheelchair and onto the bed. The sheets had already been pulled down. Then, she slipped her bathrobe down from her shoulders. Her breasts were spilling over the cups of her bra and her nipples pressed out against the chill. She glanced at Skye nervously, but he offered her a kind smile and said nothing. Sakura averted her jade-green eyes and turned her gaze to Syaoran. He was standing beside her with those low-slung jeans revealing his pressing knife-blade hips. Gently, she grasped his hips and drew him to her body. 

He was cold and shaking, but gently cupped the back of her head, twisting his fingers through her hair. He let out a shuddering breath that rattled deeply in his lungs. Then, she saw him glancing over her head at Skye, she presumed.

“It’s alright, Syaoran-kun,” she whispered. 

He nodded nervously and then cautiously unfastened her bra. She covered herself for a moment and then lowered her arms when his amber eyes darkened with fear and rejection. She unbuttoned the top snap of his jeans and lowered the zipper. His skin was naked and pale and hairless where it was revealed. Carefully, she reached inside his pants and wrapped her fingers around his soft member. 

Syaoran nervously glanced at Skye again, but the young man’s blue eyes were sincere and unwavering. He was getting no pleasure from watching them.

Sakura touched the smooth plane of his stomach, tracing the curvature and ridges of his muscles. His face was carved from ivory, pale silver-blue veins beneath his alabaster flesh. His hair was as rich and fine as dark chocolate and wispy around his handsome face. His eyes were amber, large and sparkling, and fringed by dark lashes so long they shadowed his face. His shoulders were strong and so thin the ridges of bone showed. His arms were corded and lean, his thighs tight and slender. Syaoran had a beautiful body. Any woman would sell her left breast to possess him for so much as a day.

And here was Sakura… giving him up. 

He kissed her cheek tenderly and whispered in her ear, “Thank you… so much for this and… I’m sorry…”

She hugged him tightly. The feel of his naked skin against hers was heavenly. “It’s alright,” she murmured. 

He wrapped his arms around her. 

Then, there were no more words between them. 

Sakura was by no definition a virgin. She had been with Raitei many times, willingly at first and later always by force. Syaoran was a sex slave, though soon to be free. He had lost his virginity at a sickeningly young age. He had been with many people, men and women alike, and always by force. 

Therefore, neither one of them were new to sex.

Syaoran gently lifted behind her back and slipped her bathrobe down her thighs so that she was left before him in only her soft cotton panties. She shivered as his fingers ghosted down her stomach and slipped beneath the elastic band. He gently pulled her panties down her legs and laid them neatly on her wheelchair with her bra. The robe was a puddle on the floor at his feet.

Sakura pulled his jeans down and gripped the length of him with both hands. He was soft, velvet-smooth, and clean. The mushroomed head of him was beginning to glisten with pre-cum as he hardened in her hands. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be concentrating very hard, probably on becoming aroused. As a sex slave, he often had to force himself to fullness and push up into someone like the growing head of a fern.

Sakura reached for him, wrapping her hands up the length of his satin-soft back. He lifted her legs and parted her thighs to fit himself neatly between them. Sakura knew her core was hot and wet for him and she felt almost a little embarrassment, but Syaoran was pressing at her entrance almost eagerly. 

She tried to relax and exhaled deeply. Syaoran gently cupped her face, but said nothing. She took that to be his sign and nodded slightly. He closed his eyes and then pushed deep inside of her. Her muscles stretched and tightened around him, constricting his length. He made a small sound.

Sakura lifted her pelvis, pressing their naked forms tightly together. She gripped his shoulders and wrapped her legs around his sharp hips. He braced his hands on the bed just above her shoulders, eyes still closed. He thrust quickly and evenly into her, adjusting just right to strike a place inside her that sent a spike of hot pleasure through her entire body. He was so practiced, so perfect, but he appeared to get no pleasure from being inside her.

Maybe he was thinking of the things Raitei had done to her and the similar things that had been none to him.

Their moment went on forever, lasting for what felt like a terrible pleasurable eternity. Then, finally, Syaoran pulled abruptly from her body and wrapped his member in a paper towel he had produced from seemingly nowhere. He made several small jerking motions and she saw his seed spill. Then, he folded the towel tightly and pulled on his pants. He handed Sakura her robe and she clutched it her chest tightly, still feeling hot and incomplete. 

“Syaoran-kun,” she whispered.

Skye scribbled his signature on the papers and then stamped it in bright red ink. “It’s finished,” he said to Sakura. To Syaoran, he said, “You’re free.”

The ink on the paper looked like blood.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	29. Two-Sided World

I really want to wrap this story up and move on to a new one, but I don’t really know how I want to close everything up. So, I guess I’ll just kind of wing it and whatever happens, happens. Technically, Syaoran and Sakura already had their lemon so this story could be over… but I’m not that mean. I want to close this story by Chapter 30. I’m shooting for that, but with me who knows what will happen.

Please check out SakuraSou1307's awesome fanart for chapter 26! Find me on Deviantart and it's all in my profile.

X X X

Skye suggested Syaoran remain with Sakura for a few days, just until the dust settled at the offices. He would file away the paperwork and send it to several different offices. Then, it would return to be refilled at the Slave Center, proclaiming Syaoran a freed man. If he should ever be taken by traders and attempt to be resold within the country’s borders, his name would be on file and he would be released. There were several other more complicated things that ensured he would not be enslaved within this country. If he was, by chance, brought to another country and sold, nothing would protect him.

With Syaoran free to go, Sakura’s house felt rather empty even though he was still with her. Maybe it was that she knew he was going to leave. She had told him that she could stay for as long as he liked, until he could find someplace suitable to live and secure a job. 

Now, he was free and he didn’t really know what to do with himself. 

…

Two days later, Skye called and told them that all the paperwork was in order and Syaoran was free to go without a hitch. 

It all seemed too easy.

…

The day after Skye called, Syaoran went out, remembering Sakura smiling beautiful face as she waved to him from the door of her stunning house. 

The city was big and ugly. It was rank with the smell of garbage and exhaust fumes and too many people. Building towered miles high, stabbing hideously into the clear blue sky. The clouds above were blotted out by wires and poles and signs. Stars would be hidden at night by the petals of blinding neon and lights of the skyscrapers. 

Syaoran ducked into a shop that sold sweets and flowers. He inhaled deeply the fragrance of blossoms and sugar and timidly explored the store. He wandered the aisles of roses and lilies, tenderly touching the petals of one beautiful lemon-yellow tulip.

Someone slammed into the backs of his legs. He turned and looked into the round freckled face of a little girl with her red hair pulled into braided pigtails. 

“Hi,” she said with that cheerful innocence only children had. “What’re those scars on your arms from?”

Syaoran’s throat closed, but he swallowed thickly to get his voice back. “I was hurt as a child,” he told her. It wasn’t completely a lie.

“Oh,” she said and offered him a winning front-teeth-missing smile. “It looks like it hurts a lot, even now.”

He nodded and touched the ridges of scar wrapping around his wrists.

“Emma, honey, what are you doing?” A young woman hurried over and took the little girl’s hand. She was pretty with fair skin and long dark hair brushed into glossy waves. Her eyes were deep black, the color of flint. “Are you bothering this man?” She looked up into Syaoran’s face and offered him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. Is she bothering you?”

“No, no,” Syaoran said kindly and returned her smile. “Of course not.” He felt her eyes raking down his bare arms, taking in the scars on his flesh. The ones around his wrists were clearly from shackles. They displayed the chains slavery had wrapped all over him. He shuddered.

How would she react if she recognized the scars? Would she hurt him? Would she leave?

Holding the little girl’s hand and a bouquet of white and pink daisies in the crook of her elbow, the young woman lifted Syaoran’s hand with her free one. She brushed her thumb over the scars around his wrist and then smiled at him wonderfully.

He felt his own mouth curve in response.

“You’re a freed slave, aren’t you?” she asked.

The blood rushed from his face and he jerked his hand away from her. He stumbled back from her.

“No, no, no!” The young woman said quickly. “Please, don’t misunderstand. I believe that all people should be free to live their lives outside the rule of someone else. People are not possessions. They should not be owned.”

His eyes widened, but when she reached for his hand again he allowed her to hold it. The little girl, Emma, wrapped her arms around his leg in a childish hug. For a moment, they just stood like that in some kind of awkward embrace of strangers. Then, staring directly into his eyes, she feathered her lips over the scars on his wrist and gave him a beautiful smile. She then took Emma’s hand, cradling the bouquet of daisies in her elbow, and walked away from him. He watched her as she checked out and gave her one last smile before she disappeared on the crowded ugly city street outside.

…

After the sweet shop, Syaoran ducked into a dark store specializing in guns and knives and swords. The man behind the counter was old, mid-nineties, with his twinkling blue eyes wrapped in the lines of his face. He was withered, bowed in half like a gnarled walking stick. He smiled, showing crooked yellow teeth, and spat a wad of chewing tobacco into a dusty brass spittoon. 

“Hello,” Syaoran called brightly. His spirit still felt uplifted from his meeting with the young woman and Emma in the flower and sweet shop. He strolled up to the counter where a long sword with beautiful carvings etched into the blade was spread out on blue velvet and looked down on it with admiration. “It’s a beautiful blade,” he said. 

The old man nodded and put one gnarled hand on the glass counter.

Syaoran reached to touch the flat of the blade, but a cane slammed across the back of his hand. The blade bit into his palm as the blow shoved his hand into the sword. Immediately, he jerked his hand back, cradling it against his chest. Blood splattered on the floor.

“Get out of my shop, you dirty slave,” the old man snarled. His yellow teeth gleamed and he viciously chewed another wad of tobacco. “Where is your master?”

“I,” Syaoran sputtered. “I’m free…!”

The old man made a wretched sound. “Disgusting thing. Get out!”

Syaoran stumbled backwards out the door onto the busy street. Two people stumbled into him. One, a woman in her mid-fifties with an assortment of tight honey-blonde curls, glared at him fiercely. The second, a man in his late thirties wearing a pinstriped suit and deep forest-green tie, produced a handkerchief from his pocket quickly and pressed it into Syaoran’s bloody hand with a smile. Then, they both moved on in an instant.

It was then that Syaoran realized that there were two faces to this coin… two sides of his freedom… two kinds of people. 

Some would accept him readily. Others would continue to scorn him.

This was the way it would be, but he also realized something else.

He didn’t have to fake his arousal and his pleasure when he had been having sex, giving his payment, to Sakura. He had loved being inside her, relished her soft warm body beneath him. She was so kind and sweet and gentle. She had freed him, lost money on him.

He actually thought that he… could love her. Maybe he had already fallen in love with her.

Either way, he turned around on the crowded ugly street and returned to Sakura’s beautiful white house surrounded by her burgeoning garden.

…

Sakura was sitting in her wheelchair, half asleep, on the porch with a crumpled paperback open in her lap. Her hand, finger tips covered with Band-Aids to prevent her from gnawing at them with worry, was splayed on the open page. Her caramel hair hung in wisps around her beautiful porcelain doll face. Sunlight dappled her skin and her pastel-petal-pink sundress. She looked like an angel, his angel.

Quietly, Syaoran knelt at her feet, cradling her naked crippled foot in his warm hands.

She woke with a start, gasping a deep breath into her lungs. “Ah, Syaoran-kun, you scared me,” she whispered and pressed a hand to her heart. “How was the city?”

“Ugly,” he murmured and ran his hands up her foot to her ankle. “I missed this place and its beauty. I missed you…” 

She laughed quietly. “I’m glad, Syaoran-kun,” she said and reached for him. 

He got to his knees and slipped into her arms. She held him against her chest, feeling their hearts beating as one. 

“I missed you, too,” she whispered into the cool chocolate wisps of his tousled hair. 

“Sakura-chan, do you think… maybe, I could still be here… with you? Could I stay here with you?”

She sobbed into his shoulder, holding him closer. “I’d like that. I’d really love that,” she said. “Yes, Syaoran-kun. Please, stay with me.”

He wrapped his arms around her narrow waist and fit his body neatly between her parted legs. The heat coming off of her was arousing and soothing rather than frightening. He did not fear her; maybe he never had. Maybe, he had always hoped she would treat him kindly.

Now, all his dreams were a reality. 

He had a beautiful name.

He had her kind touch.

He had his freedom.

He had her…

He had her.

X X X

Alright. Everything came together nicely. Next chapter will be the last one for this story. I plan a nice Syaoran and Sakura lemon, but who knows if that will come about the way I’m planning. Try to stick with it, everybody!

And check out SakuraSou1307’s FanArt for Chapter 26!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	30. Epilogue: Back to You

Last chapter! *dun dun dun* Oh-no!

SakuraSou1307 drew more fanart! You know the drill. Here’s the link: http://sourin.deviantart.com/art/Back-to-You-170649046?q=&qo=0

Make sure everyone reads the oh-so important author’s note at the end!

Boo-hoo-hoo!

X X X

Syaoran’s life was like a dream. 

He had been free for more than a month and counting. Sakura was beautiful and kind. He often looked into the illuminated peony of her face to find her staring back with glowing love and happiness. Even if he had wanted to resist, it would have been hard not to fall in love with her. She kissed his cheek and his scars often.

A week after Sakura freed him, Yuzuriha was released from the hospital with Ryuo at her side. Wonderfully, she joined Sakura and decided she would follow suit and free Ryuo. As he was a working slave, his freedom would come a bit slower and easier. He had only to work off his payment under the watchful eye of Skye, the notary they had specifically asked for because of Sakura’s glowing recommendation. 

Fai was once again working hard at the hospital. He and Kurogane had made up and, though their relationship was no less rocky than it had ever been, they had reached a kind of truce. 

Things had gone the right way. Life was good.

…

“Syaoran,” Sakura said over a dinner of uninteresting salad on a regular Tuesday night. It was especially late, as they had caught a movie and then spent an hour walking through the beautiful park next to the theatre. Sakura’s leg was no better and she couldn’t walk for long, but Syaoran was strong. He carried her easily and whenever she needed it. 

He smiled at her and the stars were reflected in his amber eyes. “Yes, Sakura?”

“Did you like the movie?”

“Not particularly, but the theatre was beautiful.”

“It was your first time in an old movie palace, right? Houdini used to do shows there at the height of his time.”

Syaoran smiled. “I enjoyed it.”

Sakura took another crunchy bite of her salad and licked ranch dressing from the corner of her mouth. “I’m glad and…” she touched his hands across the table. “I’m also happy you decided to stay with me. Syaoran, I… I…”

He wet his lips, looking directly into her eyes, through her soul. 

“I love you,” she finally whispered. “I really truly do. I love you so much. Just the thought of losing you kills me. I just…” she paused, worrying her lower lip with her teeth. “I love you,” she said again and then her jade-green eyes filled with tears. She lowered her face, quickly shoved a crouton between her back teeth, and crunched it noisily.

Syaoran felt his heart blossom with happiness, throbbing and pounding in his narrow chest. His lips curved with a smile and he reached across the table to lift her chin. He dabbed away her tears with his napkin and whispered, “Really, Sakura?”

“Yeah,” she said and hiccupped. 

There was too much table between them to promote any touching other than what his arm span could allow. Syaoran was forced to rise and circle the table to reach her side. He pulled out the chair next to her and sat down. Then he gently cupped her face between his palms and placed a faint kiss on her tear-stained cheek. 

“I love you, too,” he murmured. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for me.”

“Syaoran,” she whispered. His name was more like a prayer, a statement, a plea. "We went the long way, didn't we? We got hurt, didn't we?”

He nodded, but all his sorrow was erased when he pressed his lips to hers and she tenderly licked his lower lip in a silent plea for entrance. He opened his mouth to her and she gently probed his mouth. He tasted like garlic and tomato and something that was entirely him. Fire burned under his skin, rearing up like something alive. 

Desire. 

Syaoran had not once in his miserable life felt desire for anyone and as a sex slave he had always been around other beautiful people. Female sex slaves with glowing skin and long flowing hair, polished and buffed for auction. Slavery was beautiful on the surface, but he had never desired another’s body. 

Now, there seemed to be too much clothing between him and Sakura. He wanted to touch her, feel her soft supple satin-smooth skin beneath his fingertips. He had broken their kiss before he knew what he was doing. His tongue trailed down her neck and he felt her pulse pounding in her throat like his own heartbeat. A sound vibrated in her chest, traveling through him, into him. Her fingers were cool and soft, threading through his hair, rubbing his scalp. She leaned her head back and pushed against him. 

“Syao…ran,” she whispered. Her hands went down his shoulders, raked across his back, and then she untucked his shirt to slide her palms across the strength of his stomach. The word SLAVE was a raised scar now, ugly and beautiful at the same time. She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it from his shoulders, revealing his damaged porcelain-pale skin and chiseled fine muscles beneath translucent skin. She touched him gently with her fingertips. 

Syaoran threaded his fingers through her caramel hair and then timidly cupped her breasts through her shirt.

“It’s alright,” she whispered and arched her back, pushing her breasts into his hands. “Help me up, please,” she whispered. “Take me to our room.”

She and Syaoran had been sleeping in the same bed the night Raitei struck. After that, there were nights she heard him moving around the house, unable to sleep, and often joined him. They would sit close together on the couch, shoulder to shoulder. Other nights, she would sleep uneasily, plagued with nightmares, and he would come to her. She wouldn’t know he was there with her until the morning when she woke to find his face, smooth with the vestiges of sleep, inches from her own lying on the pillow beside her. Sleep was not sacred to either of them and a bed did not offer any safety from monsters.

Gently, he lifted her into his arms, cradling her against his naked chest. Her lips feathered paths over the scars on his torso. He shivered as he laid her against the pillows and her nails raked across his sharp hips. He kissed her lips and then her neck, suckling at her pulse. He could feel her peeling up her shirt, pressing her naked flesh to his. She was warm and soft, beautiful. Light shone out of her beautiful heart.

He slid his fingers into the cups of her bra and fondled her nipples gently between his fingertips. She moaned deep and low in her throat.

He loved hearing her. He loved knowing he could make her feel wonderful. He had always wanted to be something for her and now that she loved him, he could be. Everything he had ever wanted was in his grasp. 

Timidly, he guided her hand to his full manhood and she gripped him eagerly through his jeans. 

“You don’t have to be afraid, Syaoran,” she whispered. “You never have to be afraid again. I love you.” She threaded her fingers through his hair and pulled his face to hers. She kissed him and he felt all her love pressing through his chest. “I love you…”

He kissed her fiercely, desperately, with all his broken heart. 

They had already been together, as his payment, but he wished with all his heart that this could be their real first time. He wanted to be tender and perfect for her. He wanted this to be everything they both had never had. He had never had a gentle touch and she had been raped and tormented by the man she once loved.

This love, their love, would be everything kind and soft in the world. They would be perfect for each other, perfect for the rest of their days. 

He slipped her cold brace from her leg and laid it aside. She hooked the toes of her good foot in the waist of his jeans and drew him to her again. She unbuttoned his jeans and lowered the zipper. This time, his boxers formed a barrier between them. She licked her lips and freed him from his clothing.

She tried to take him into her mouth, but he stopped her with his hands on her shoulders. 

“Syaoran, what is it?” she asked.

“I just want this to be for you…”

“That’s the beauty of this, Syaoran. I love you. When it’s about you, it’s still about me. I want you to feel good,” she cooed and gathered him into her hands again. This time, he allowed her to envelope him in the heat of her mouth. 

While she swirled her tongue over the salty head of him, he slipped his fingers into the waist of her skirt. He touched her slit with practiced ease, stroking her sensitive pearl and bringing her quickly to the knife edge of pleasure and painful desire. When she moaned, he felt it deep in his own bones. 

Suddenly, she jerked all of herself away from him. For a moment, he was terrified he did something wrong, but her face was flushed pink and she was panting. 

“Syaoran, the first time… I want you inside me for the first time,” she panted and then looked up at him with the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.

His own lips curved in response and he nodded. “I love you, Sakura,” he whispered.

She didn’t say anything back to him, but she kissed him and he felt everything he had ever wanted beneath her lips.

Tenderly, he pulled her skirt and panties down her legs to lay with his clothes on the floor. She opened her arms to him, breasts still supported and hidden by the lacy cups of her bra. He unhooked the clasp and slipped it from her shoulders. 

Her body was beautiful and he told her so. Her cheeks tinged pink and she giggled. 

Then, there were no more words between them, once again.

He fit between her legs and she clutched him to her chest with both arms wrapped tightly around his back. His skin was soft and heated, sticking to her like her own flesh. When he pushed inside her, filling her to the brim so that the emptiness she had been feeling since she had freed him vanished. His mouth burned a path from her mouth to her throat and he cupped her breasts gently. 

She moaned, gripping his strong chiseled shoulders and noticing for the first time the faint dusting of freckles on his pale skin. She kissed his chest, kissed the scars on him. Her hands ghosted over the words SAKURA’S FAULT on his back. 

Syaoran broke the silence between them, whispering into her throat. “It’s not your fault…”

“I love you,” Sakura whispered.

Syaoran began to thrust. Her breasts bounced in his hands with each movement. He reached between their bodies to where they were joined perfectly and stroked her sensitive clit. She cried his name, clutching his body tightly to her. She could feel the scars on his thighs from the whip Raitei had applied to him. Surely, he could feel the scars on her leg as well.

The coil in her stomach, building tighter and tighter, was full to bursting. Syaoran’s thrusting grew frantic, pressing deep and full inside her. He pulled out and gripped himself, but Sakura wrapped her good leg around his hips and crushed him against her.

“No, Syaoran,” she pleaded. “Please, come inside me. I want you to.” 

He kissed her and gratefully slid back into the tightness of her body. He thrust deep and fast, still caressing her pearl. Suddenly, her muscles clamped down on him, bringing him over the edge of pleasure with her. Exhausted, he pressed against her chest for a moment, kissing her throat while his hot seed filled her womb. Her body filled with heat.

Deep inside, she felt it take to her.

Syaoran’s child, her child.

“Syaoran,” she whispered and the look on his face told him he already knew and he was afraid. “I love you. It’s alright. Remember, you never have to be afraid anymore. Neither of us do, not anymore.”

“But,” he whispered and put his hand over the naked skin of her stomach. 

She shook her head. “I love you. This is our family and it will be protected,” she said and held him tightly against her breasts. He laid his cheek on her skin, listening to the pounding of her heartbeat. He had never had a family before, never known his parents. The thought of a family, with a woman as wonderful and beautiful and kind as Sakura, made his heart blossom with joy.

“Yes,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

That night, they slept in each other’s arms, wrapped safely in thoughts of their life to come. Life would not be easy for them or for their child, but maybe they could be the first steps in a completely new life. With Sakura and Yuzuriha as some of the first, more slaves would be free. Syaoran and Sakura’s child, the child Fai had feared, would grow up strong and kind. The child would lead many slaves to freedom, fearlessly battling the old ways that people had grown so accustomed to.

Life was not perfect, but it was good and powerful.

Syaoran and Sakura had each other.

And soon, they would have a family.

Things had gone the right way. Life was good.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

And, drum roll please, we are finished! Here we go. Very important author's note:

First, drop a review and let me know what you think! Are the characters way out of character? Does everybody hate Fai? Think I torture Syaoran way too much (but it's because he's so easy to be mean to, though I always make sure to give him a happy ending!)? Are permanently disgusted and can no longer even watch Tsubasa thanks to me? Loved it? Hated it? Are scared for life because of what happened to Syaoran and Sakura? (Flames will be used to roast marshmallows and weenies!) Think I need to do more editing before I post chapters? Post to slow? Chapters are to short? To long? Yada, yada, yada…

Second, there will be no sequel… at all, so don't ask!

Third, I own nothing except my original characters: Raitei, Emma and her mother, the old man, and I think that's everybody. I also own my plot! So there, now I can't be sued!

Fourth, thank you SakuraSou1307 for all of your beautiful FanArt. Anyone who hasn’t checked it out. Here’s the link to her profile on DeviantArt: http://sourin.deviantart.com/ (Or go to mine.) Check out her artwork! Or else you will all suffer!

Fifth, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

Finally, thank you for making it this far! All the way to the end! Woot!

Fai fake whistles!

And so, I bid you adieu.


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